Detective Sam Watson’s eyebrows rose when he saw me sitting at the big round table in the center of the main room in Jake’s restaurant, cradling a cup of excessively sugary tea in my hands. “When I got the call and it was not directing me to the Lighthouse Library, I dared hope you wouldn’t be involved, Lucy.”
I shrugged. What could I say? Not only was I involved, but my family was also.
“What does that mean?” Dad sputtered. “My daughter does not associate with common criminals.”
“It’s okay, dear.” Mom patted his arm. “Lucy’s acquainted with Detective Watson. As am I.”
Watson nodded. “Mrs. Richardson.”
“Detective, so nice to see you again.” My mom is an accomplished liar. “Would you care for a cup of tea?”
The edges of his mouth might have turned up fractionally, but he hid it well and said, “Not at the moment, thank you.”
“I don’t believe you’ve met my husband. Detective Sam Watson, Millar Richardson.”
Dad got to his feet, and the two men shook hands as they eyed each other warily.
My mom was “acquainted,” as she put it, with Detective Watson. Not long after I arrived, Mom came down to the Outer Banks to try to talk me into going home to Boston and found herself accused of killing a high school rival.
Officer Butch Greenblatt had come in with Detective Watson. He didn’t say anything but gave us all nods of greeting. Butch is Jake’s brother as well as the boyfriend of Uncle Amos’s law partner, Stephanie Stanton.
“Connor,” Watson said as my dad sat down. “I see the gang’s all here.”
In answer to Aunt Ellen’s call, the ambulance had soon arrived, sirens screaming and lights flashing, along with several police cars. We’d been bundled into the restaurant and ordered to wait for the detective. I hadn’t heard the ambulance tearing out of the parking lot, which told me they’d been in no hurry to leave. Richard Lewiston Junior, Dad’s business partner, Evangeline’s husband, and Ricky’s father, was dead.
Jake had closed the kitchen and hustled the remaining patrons out the door, many of them clutching hastily assembled takeout containers in confusion. Jake and Josie and the staff now huddled around the bar, waiting their turn to be questioned.
“Who found the body?” Watson asked.
I exchanged glances with Connor. So, as I suspected, it was now a body.
Ruth lifted a quivering hand. Her makeup had carved black rivers through her cheeks. “I … I did. I took my break and went out for a smoke.”
“What door did you leave by?”
“The kitchen door. I stepped outside and started to light my cigarette. I … I …” She shuddered.
“Take your time,” Mom said.
She gave my mother a grateful, although weak, smile. “I kicked something. I knew it wasn’t a rock because it wasn’t hard. I don’t know what I thought it was. I looked down and saw … him. He was just lying there, staring up at me. Not moving.”
“What did you do then?” Watson would have been anxious for her to spit it out so he could get to questioning the potential witnesses, maybe even the killer, but he spoke patiently, applied no pressure, and let the hostess compose herself. If she collapsed into a weeping puddle, it would do no one any good.
Aggression, as I well know, isn’t Detective Watson’s style. It wouldn’t help him in this case anyway. Mom and Aunt Ellen formed a solid wall of matriarchal support around Ruth.
“I … I kicked him, and he didn’t react. I thought, at first, he was a drunk who’d passed out on his way home. I gave him a nudge with my foot. He didn’t move, so I leaned over to shake him. Then I saw the … the blood. And the knife. I guess I screamed, and then all these nice people were with me.”
“Did you touch him?” Watson asked. “Did you try to help?”
“I … I don’t remember. I think so.”
“You were crouched beside him when I arrived,” Connor said.
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Did you touch the knife?” Watson asked.
“No. I’m sure I didn’t.”
“Have you ever seen that man before?”
“No. He didn’t come in tonight or any other time when I was here.”
“Are you sure?”
“I can’t be positive about other nights. We get a lot of people in here. But definitely not tonight. It’s Monday. We’re never that busy on Mondays, even in the summer, so I’d remember if he’d been in. He couldn’t have come in when I wasn’t at the door. I only left my post a minute or two before. I walked through the kitchen to tell Jake I’d be outside. It was almost closing time anyway.”
Watson glanced at Jake, still dressed in his chef’s uniform of white jacket and gray checked pants. He’d left the group of his employees to stand protectively behind Ruth. “I’ve never seen him before, but you should ask the bartenders and the waitstaff. I don’t come out front much. Some nights not at all.”
“You have no idea who he might be and what might have brought him here tonight?” Watson asked them.
Jake and Ruth shook their heads.
“About that,” my dad said. “I know him.”
“You do?”
“He’s my law partner of more than forty years—Richard Lewiston Junior, normally called Rich. Our fathers were partners before us. We’re from Boston, and I’m here with my wife to congratulate my daughter and Dr. McNeil on their engagement. I had no idea Rich was anywhere in the vicinity, and I have absolutely no idea what would have brought him not only to the Outer Banks but to this restaurant.”
Like a pair of ghosts, ever present but unacknowledged, the names Evangeline and Ricky hung over the table. Mom cleared her throat. “Someone has to say it.”
“Say what?” Watson asked.
Dad sighed, but he gave Mom an almost unnoticeable nod.
“Rich must have decided at the last minute to join his wife and son,” she said. “They were part of our dinner party earlier this evening.”
“Is that so? Where are this wife and son now?”
“Evangeline—Mrs. Lewiston—wasn’t feeling well, so she excused herself before we finished dinner, saying she’d drive herself back to their hotel. They’re at the Ocean Side. As for her son, Richard the Third …”
“He’s not actually called that, is he?” Connor whispered to me.
“’Fraid so,” I said. “As I recall, he was suspended from school for fighting when his English class was studying Shakespeare’s historical plays.” Richard’s a perfectly normal, modern American name, but teenage boys can make fun of anything. Never mind when we started going together and some people thought Lucy and Ricky dreadfully funny. I didn’t even know why until someone told me about I Love Lucy, the old Lucille Ball TV show.
“Lucy,” my dad warned.
“Sorry. Off topic. You might want to ask the bartender if she knows where Ricky got to. He was talking to her earlier.”
All heads swiveled to the young woman perched on a barstool among her colleagues. She saw us staring and blinked in confusion. “What?” she said.
“Wait here, all of you.” Watson took the few steps across the room to the bar to talk to her.
I edged ever so slightly toward them. If I could have pricked up my ears, I would have.
“I’ve been told,” Watson said, “you were talking to a young man from those people’s party earlier tonight?”
“Yeah. He said his name was Ricky. He’d been at Mr. and Mrs. O’Malley’s table with Lucy and Connor and the others, but he left them before the main courses were brought out and took a seat at the bar. I thought that was rude, but it’s none of my business. He was drinking a lot. Scotch, and not the cheap stuff either.”
Watson was facing away from me, so I couldn’t hear what he said, but her reply was clear.
“Hour ago, maybe? I’d say he left about fifteen to thirty minutes before I heard the yelling from outside. He wanted to meet me when I get off, but I told him I’m in a relationship. He said he’d be at the bar in the Ocean Side anyway, if I felt like dropping by.”
Watson asked her something.
“As if. I get that all the time here. Rich guys on vacation, too much to drink. Wives and girlfriends at home. More trouble than they’re worth. No thanks.”
Watson thanked her and returned to our table of curious faces. “Jake, did anyone go out the kitchen door this evening before Ruth did?”
Jake scrunched up his face and thought. “We’re in and out all the time. That’s where my staff go for breaks. They don’t stand outside the front door smoking. You can ask them if they saw anything, but I went out for some air about fifteen minutes before Ruth did, and he wasn’t there then.”
“Are you sure of the time?”
“I wouldn’t set my watch by it, but round about then.” He glanced over to the group of his helpers, sitting silently together. “Robyn, she’s new, burned a steak. In my earlier days I would have torn a blue streak off her. But, under the influence of my loving bride”—he smiled at Josie—“I’ve learned to take myself away for a few minutes. Robyn didn’t mean to do it, and she won’t do it again. Me yelling at her wouldn’t help the situation any. So, I stepped outside. Took a couple of paces, breathed a few times, and when I’d calmed down, I came back in and got on with it. I didn’t see a body, and I would have if one had been lying at my feet.”
“It’s dark out there,” Watson said.
“It’s my place,” Jake said. “I know what’s happening around me.”
Watson nodded.
“I didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary either,” Jake said. “No one arguing or fighting for sure. But then again, the kitchen’s a noisy place.”
“Thanks,” Watson said. “I’ll talk to your staff in turn. But first,” he asked the people at my table, “did any of you see Richard Lewiston Junior this evening?”
“Never met him,” Connor, Amos, and Ellen said as Mom, Dad, and I shook our heads firmly.
“I didn’t know he was in town,” Dad said.
“I suppose it’s possible Evangeline called and told him where we were,” Mom said. “Although that wouldn’t explain why he was in Nags Head in the first place or why she didn’t tell us she’d invited him.”
“She left,” Dad pointed out.
“That’s right. But Ricky was still here. For a while, anyway.”
“And then he left,” I said.
“Butch,” Watson said, “you’re too close to these people to take statements. Go outside and supervise the scene and ask Officer Rankin to come in.”
Butch nodded and left.
“You know what my schedule’s like, Sam,” Josie said. “I need to get home. Can I give my statement first? It’ll be short. I saw nothing, heard nothing. Never saw the dead man before in all my life.”
“Sure,” Watson said.
When Officer Holly Rankin came in, almost bouncing on her toes at the chance to be of help to the detective, Watson told her to take statements—Josie’s first—from my family and the restaurant staff. “I have to go round to the Ocean Side and speak to Mrs. Lewiston, and I hope to get there before she and her son hear the news.”
Mom stood up. “I will accompany you.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’d prefer—”
“Not a problem.” She gathered up her handbag. “Evangeline and I have been the closest of friends for forty years. She’ll need all the comfort I can offer at this time. Lucille and young Ricky are also extremely close. She’ll accompany me.”
“I will?” I said. “I mean, yeah. Glad to be of help.”
“Who’s Lucille?” Watson asked.
“Me,” I said. “I have the name of a ninety-year-old woman.”
“You were named for—” Mom began.
“Yes, I know.” I was honored, really I was, to have been given the name of Dad’s maternal grandmother. I wasn’t honored when people met me for the first time and said I was much younger than they’d expected.
Watson shrugged. “Might as well. Lucy will find some way to get involved, whether I want her help or not.”
I didn’t bother to protest. Somehow, that was the way things worked out.
Connor got to his feet. He put his hand lightly on my arm and led me a few steps away from the table while Watson instructed Holly Rankin. “Are you okay going with your mom? Want me to follow?”
I laid my hand on his chest, just for a moment to feel the beating of his heart. “Not necessary, but thanks. You go home, and I’ll call you when I’m back at the lighthouse. Mom never liked Richard the Second, but this will still be upsetting for her, and I need to be with her. Particularly when Sam breaks the news to Evangeline and Ricky.”
“Interesting that they’ve both disappeared.”
“Isn’t it just?”