It was a perfectly beautiful day, sun shining, gentle waves washing over the sand. The tide had brought great piles of seaweed to rest on the beach. And crime scene tape cordoned off a border that kept onlookers from the body that had also been brought ashore.
As Brodie followed Liam past the small crowd and over to the body, he saw that officers guarded the yellow-tape barrier, and one watched over the body.
“Another day in paradise, huh?” Liam murmured. He shook his head. “Trust me—we’re a party town. We have crime. But this...”
Brodie was surprised that Liam was suspicious—not even having seen the victim yet.
“Liam, it could be anything. Someone from a refugee boat, someone just out and partying hard—someone who just went overboard.”
“Right.”
They reached the body. Brodie nodded an acknowledgment to the officer standing by; if he wondered why Liam was allowing him on the site, he gave no sign. Brodie figured that being with the sheriff gave him all access.
The medical examiner down from Marathon that day was Dr. Sheila Green. She was hunkered down, but looked up when Liam walked up and introduced Brodie. Dr. Green was an African American woman of about forty, almost bone thin and currently grim. “So sad. I’d say at the moment, it’s a drowning. She’s in a one piece as you can see—but she’s been in overnight. Probably washed up late last night, and drowned shortly before. And exact time is going to be hard to pin—since she’s been in the sea.”
Liam and Brodie both squatted down by her. The ME had moved the hair from the victim’s face. She had been a small woman, about five-foot-two, Brodie estimated. Not heavy, but rounded. Her skin already showed signs of crab or fish nibbles. Liam shooed one away as it emerged from the seaweed that still surrounded her; the body hadn’t been moved since she had been discovered.
Brodie noticed something.
“Her fingers,” he pointed out.
“Her fingers?” The ME took a gloved hand and gently raised one of the dead woman’s hands.
“Callused...there,” Brodie said. “She was a guitar player.”
“Possibly,” the ME agreed. “There are other ways to callus your fingers, but...yes, possibly.”
“How long since she was discovered now?”
“About an hour and a half. I happened to be down here—that’s how I took the call,” Dr. Green said.
The officer, patiently standing by, broke his silence. “Our first call was exactly one hour and twenty-one minutes ago,” he told Liam. “The woman who discovered her is still right back there in the patrol car.”
“All right, thank you. Can you get her up—any possibility of an autopsy today?”
“I’ll do my best,” Dr. Green said.
Liam rose and Brodie did likewise. He’d studied the body the best he could, as it lay. No visible scars—and no blood anywhere on the body. Her heart had stopped beating long before she’d washed up on the sand. She’d had a round, heart-shaped face, and generous lips. The slight wrinkling around them suggested that she’d smiled a lot.
“Sorry to say, but I think we’re going to discover that she was out on some kind of a party boat,” Dr. Green said, rising as well. “Most of our problems down here have to do with alcohol or partying that got out of control.”
“Officer Whitney,” Liam said. “Have we had any reports of a missing person off a party boat—or any missing reports, period, overnight or recently?”
“No, sir.”
“Maybe they haven’t discovered her gone yet,” Dr. Green suggested.
“A party boat—that doesn’t count heads?” Liam said.
“A private party?” Brodie put in.
“She might even have been out alone,” Dr. Green said.
“Any empty boats out there?” Liam asked.
“No, sir, no reports from our people or the Coast Guard,” the officer said.
“Someone has to be missing her,” Liam muttered. “All right, thank you, Dr. Green. I know your office can be busy, but...”
“I’ll do everything I can,” Dr. Green promised.
The patrol car was parked farther up the beach, and a woman was seated in the back, the door open, her bare legs extended.
She was young, barely into her twenties, Brodie thought. A caftan covered her two-piece bathing suit; her feet were adorned with beaded flip-flops. She was sipping coffee, and looked up eagerly as they approached.
“Oh, my God, you’re the detective I need to speak with, right?” she asked, rising from the car as they approached. “Detectives... Oh, my God, this is so horrible. I never imagined. I’m here with a bachelorette party... I just came out to the beach to walk along the shore...it’s so beautiful. And then I saw a clump of seaweed and I looked down and there was a body in it. I dropped my phone—there was sand all over it!—but then I dialed 911. And I told the man she was dead, and he asked if I was sure, and I said yes, and he said that I should try artificial respiration and I said no, can’t you understand? Dead, dead, dead!” She extended a hand suddenly. “I’m Helen. Helen Harte.”
“Helen, I’m Detective Beckett. This is Brodie McFadden, a consultant,” Liam told her.
“Hello. I’ve been here...waiting.”
“Thank you. I’m sure this must have been a terrible shock for you,” Liam said. “And I’m so sorry you had to go through this. Did you see anything or anyone near her? Were you by the body until police arrived?”
“I wasn’t by it,” she said. “Oh, my God, no! I didn’t stay by the body! But... I could see it. I could see it. A couple were going to walk by with their children, and I stopped them, of course! I mean, a little kid, seeing something like that...”
“Did you look at her face?” Brodie asked.
She shook her head vigorously. “No! There was seaweed... Oh, I swear, I knew she was dead. I mean, I’m not trained, but I would have helped her if there had been any way. I knew she was dead. She was dead...right?” she asked in sudden panic.
“She was dead,” Brodie assured her quietly.
“You didn’t recognize her?” Liam asked.
“No, no... I told you, I’m not from here. Is anybody really from here?” She didn’t want an answer; to her, Key West was where people came to party. It was a tourist destination.
“A few,” Liam said dryly.
“Miss, she was definitely dead, and it was good of you to keep the children away,” Brodie said.
“Thank you, Detective,” she said.
“I’m not a detective. I’m a private investigator,” Brodie corrected her.
“Consulting,” Liam murmured. “All right. Was there anyone nearby when you saw her? Boats out on the water.”
“There were people out on the water, yes...a group on those Sea-Doo things or whatever they are. None of them seemed to see her, or know about her, or have the least interest in the shore.”
“You’re sure she was no one you knew, anyone with you?” Brodie asked.
She flushed. “We were up very late last night. I’m here with seven other girls. The rest of my crew is still sleeping. I—I take medication, so I don’t drink. But the rest of those guys...trust me. The woman is not...was not...with me. I just came out for a walk on the beach, and there she was.”
“Okay, thank you, the officer will see you back to your room,” Liam said. “We have all your information, just in case...”
“In case of what?” she asked, alarm leaping into her eyes.
“Just in case there’s something else we haven’t thought of,” Brodie said. “Please, don’t worry. You couldn’t have saved her. You did the right thing—especially keeping the kids away.”
“Yes, thank you,” Liam said. He stepped back and indicated that she was free to sit back in the car and leave the scene.
“I’m right across the street,” she told them, a little baffled.
“The officer will get you right to the door,” Liam said. “You’re distracted...we don’t want any accidents.”
“Right! Right! Leave it to me—I’d find a body and then walk into a car and become nothing more than one myself! Thank you, thank you. I’m so sorry. Anyway... I’m going to have one hell of a vacation story!”
The car door closed. The officer in the front leaned his head down and nodded to Liam.
Then the car whisked on to the road.
“No ID on her again—and she was definitely a guitar player,” Brodie noted.
“Everyone in the Keys is a guitar player,” Liam said. “I sure hope to hell some sick bastard isn’t out for every guitar player on the island—the place will become a pile of corpses.”
Brodie shook his head. “I don’t think that whoever is doing this is after just any guitar players.”
“Cliff’s death might still have been some kind of a bizarre accident—one that no one is obviously going to want to admit,” Liam said. “And this woman... We all know people die on the road, thinking that they’re not drunk and they have to get back home. We all know boaters die in South Florida. And we all know that people can party too hardy.”
“Yes, I understand completely,” Brodie said. “But...”
“But what?”
“Usually, when someone is gone through the night, there’s at least someone they were with who notices that they’re gone.”
* * *
The reception was going perfectly.
Colleen had posted a sign on the door, explaining that the bar would be closed for the day due to a death in the family.
Cliff had been family.
Kody had found a table for her mom and stepdad, Colleen, Kelsey Beckett and herself. There was room for Liam and Brodie if they should make it before the event ended. The Drunken Pirate was paying for the reception, though Kody knew many people had offered to help. Cliff had done all right during his life—he hadn’t been rich. No one wanted the hardship to fall on Rosy.
She knew that, around the room, the conversation was about Cliff—as it should have been. And then, of course, people would talk about the weather, and the water, and what was happening in their own lives. It was a way of accepting that a loved one or a friend was gone; it was the living going on after death.
And Kody did talk about Cliff; like others, she would remember stories that involved him, and in remembering, she would smile. As she circulated around the bar, she noted that Bev and Dan Atkins were there. Ewan Keegan and the crew from Sea Life had come out—all ten of them, spread over two tables. She spoke to them all briefly, and talked with Ewan about the find and how they would make sure that everything was properly handled between maritime law, the company and her museum. They were a polite group, all of them extending sympathy and praising Cliff.
Of course, she couldn’t help but wonder about Cliff’s own words the other night: Which of you bastards killed me?
“We’re working again, you know, Kody,” Ewan told her. “I have pictures I’ll be emailing to you. We’re in a quandary now about the remains we have found. Just bones, really. No complete skeletons, but... I don’t know. Maybe we’ll have a service at sea, and see that the bones remain where they were found. To me, that seems proper. The sea is a grave for so many.”
“I’ll be part of whatever you plan,” Kody told him.
She gave them all a little wave and moved on. She greeted any familiar faces; but even while listening to their stories, she was plagued with wondering about the body that Liam and Brodie were investigating right at that moment.
She went to check on the widow.
Rosy didn’t need anything; there were a lot of people looking after her. She whispered to Kody that she was maintaining, but that she was more of a private person, and really wanted it all to be over.
“Cliff was a man of the people. I don’t have his charm or easy ways,” Rosy told her.
“You leave whenever you feel you need to.”
“I need to be here until the end. For Cliff.”
“I’m sure he’d be very proud of you.”
Rosy smiled. She picked at the spread of food set before her. Every once in a rare while, she sipped at her glass of wine. She thanked everyone who came by.
She shivered. “It’s so cold today,” Rosy said softly.
What she didn’t know was that Cliff was standing near her, in his ghostly form.
Kelsey Beckett caught Kody’s eye and nodded, aware of Cliff as well, but they would be careful not to speak.
Kelsey had been gone from the island for a long time after her mother had died, but she and Kody had been friends before she’d left—and it had been quick to restore that friendship. Kelsey was well aware that the dead could come back in a form that only a few people were privileged or cursed to see. She also knew that Kody’s mom had none of the sense—and would seriously worry about Kody if she knew that her daughter was “seeing spirits again.”
Young children often had imaginary friends. It was only something to worry about when they thought it was their deceased grandparents or other known friends who had departed their earthly coils.
As Kody came back to her friends’ table, Colleen suddenly said, “I feel him. I feel him—as if he were here!”
“Cliff? Well, of course you feel him, dear. He’ll always be with us, in the heart, of course,” Sally said. “Especially here—at the Drunken Pirate.”
“Oh, yes, in the heart,” Kody murmured. She excused herself; Bill Worth had brought her a glass of wine, but she didn’t feel like drinking it. She wanted some water or tea.
And she wanted to be away from anyone “feeling” Cliff.
Walking over to the bar, she told Jojo, “You should have had this time off.”
He shook his head. “This was what I could do. I’m working for free. It’s my way of honoring a great guy. What can I get you?”
“Water.”
“Wild woman.”
“Yep. Can’t help myself,” she said, grimacing.
As he brought her a large plastic cup filled with water and ice, she asked, “Jojo—how the hell do you think Cliff’s drink got contaminated? You worked with him all the time. You know how careful he was. When we went out, he always asked to make sure that his food wasn’t being cooked anywhere that was used for cooking with nuts. He really was so savvy about it.”
Jojo paused, shaking his head. “Kody, I wish I could remember the night better. He came in—ordered his food and started setting up. His plate went down there—right where it always goes. So many people bought him drinks—it was the end of your festival and everyone was in a great mood. I just can’t see it. I don’t get it. The way he died...it was almost as if he swallowed a damned handful of peanuts.”
“Which he definitely didn’t do. We would have seen that.”
“I guess,” Jojo said, “though...maybe not. I always saw to it that Cliff got his drinks—and usually watered down whatever it was, which could be anything. He knew he wasn’t really going to drink it, so he’d just say, ‘Surprise me!’ But I can’t say that I watched him.”
“Do you remember what Cliff’s last drink was? Or who bought it for him?”
“I wish I did. I’ve talked to the cops and to that PI, McFadden. I don’t remember. Everyone here bought him something, seemed like. I know that he was walking around with something that looked like a White Russian, but for some reason, it seemed that everyone was ordering drinks like that the night Cliff died. White Russians, Kahlua and cream, Baileys and cream...” He paused for a minute. “Maybe Cliff picked up the wrong drink...except that I don’t even keep almond milk or anything like that back here. I just don’t know, Kody. I wish that I did.”
“Thanks, Jojo,” she said. “Hey.”
“Yep?”
“Did you pick up a cup out of the foliage by the stage by any chance?”
“I don’t think so. But all of us are always picking up any trash. I even throw away cups from other places all the time. Most islanders are good—but hey. People sometimes forget that they left trash around the tiki bar.”
She smiled and started back to the table. Rosy was speaking softly with Bill Worth.
He was so attentive. He was great.
Great...
Was he being more than attentive?
The idea was ridiculous. They’d all been friends. And now...
“He’s too close. That rascal, Bill.”
Kody almost dropped her glass. She didn’t know how Cliff’s ghost managed to get her by surprise, but she had started.
He was watching the table, too.
“Hell, I’m barely cold, and that bastard is flirting with Rosy.”
“Cliff, Bill and Emory have been trying to help her through this whole thing,” she said. “And you—you’ve been flirting with every girl on the island.”
“No, I’ve been like a counselor—a therapist,” he argued.
“Bill is a good guy,” Kody reminded him. “One of the best.”
“Yeah, yeah...and old Emory is there, too. I guess I should just be grateful, right? Nice of the Drunken Pirate to do this, yeah? And our boy Jojo, doing it all for free.”
“You will always be loved,” she told him.
And then she realized, of course, that people were looking at her.
It appeared that she was having a conversation with herself. And she didn’t even drink. She had a glass of water.
Maybe people already considered her a little weird.
She just smiled and headed toward the table. She could see the way that Kelsey was looking at her.
Have to be careful, that look warned.
Kody kept her smile glued in place and rejoined her table.
“So, really, what do you know about this Brodie McFadden?” Sally asked her. “I mean, Liam does seem to like him. And he’s very courteous. And...”
“And?” Kody asked.
“Your mother thinks he’s very good-looking,” Frank told her. “She doesn’t want you falling for a man for his looks.”
“He is really...um, tall, dark and rugged. I think you’re right, Mom. He is good-looking.”
“Oh, both of you!” Sally protested. “No, I mean, I even know who he is. I know about him. His parents were Maeve and Hamish McFadden, very well known in my generation. And you have to be careful...”
“Mom, my dad was Michael McCoy. That hasn’t tainted me in any way—that I know of, anyway!” Kody said.
“Yes, but...”
“Sally,” Frank warned.
“No, no, he seems great. Wonderful. Perfect.”
“Liam says that he is all those things,” Kelsey put in. “And Liam does know people.”
“But what future is there in...in him?” Sally asked.
“I don’t know what the future is with anyone,” Kody said. “And please, please, please—don’t go asking him what his intentions are, or anything like that.”
“Well, of course not,” Sally said, but she looked sheepish.
Kody glanced at Frank and grinned. “What were you doing, Mom, fooling around with a rocker like my dad?”
“Oh, Kody!”
Frank laughed. “Hey! Let’s call a truce here. We’re not going to ask about his intentions!” He was silent for a minute and then added softly, “You know, though, it’s the kind of thing Cliff might have done.”
Kelsey smiled. “I’m sure, in his spiritual way, he’s looking at us all—and certainly at Brodie McFadden.”
Kody narrowed her eyes at Kelsey.
Kelsey grimaced.
Cliff’s ghost was now with them again, leaning against Kelsey’s chair.
“I know his immediate intentions!” he said. “They were crystal clear. He’d just better remain...well, a gentleman!”
Kody smiled at Kelsey. “Right, because if we’d seen Cliff flirting around, we’d be certain to ask his intentions!”
“Ah, Cliff! He was a flirt—a sweetheart of a flirt,” Kody’s mom said.
“But,” Frank added, “he loved his Rosy!”
“And, oh, indeed he did,” Cliff’s ghost said sadly. He stepped back, his expression changing.
One of the entertainers for the evening—a young guitarist Kody didn’t know—approached the table.
“Miss McCoy?”
“Yes?”
“These guys were all hoping you’d do something with us.”
“Oh, no, no. My dad—”
“Was the singer, but you did sing with Cliff.”
“Yes, I was singing with him when he dropped dead,” Kody said flatly.
“Yeah, we know. One of your dad’s tunes. But we were hoping you’d do that one Cliff was so well known for doing. ‘Love in the Sun.’”
“Oh, um, no...it’s...”
“Oh, Kody,” Cliff’s ghost said softly. “Please!”
She let out a long sigh and nodded. She walked with the guitarist to the dais where she had been so recently—with Cliff.
But Cliff was still there...
And he wanted this.
The guitarist announced that she was going to do “Love in the Sun.” It was a beautiful song, a ballad. About the days of youth and love and believing in living forever...and then how love could live on forever, even when someone was gone.
Kody gave it her all. When she finished, the room was silent; then there was wild applause.
But then, she glanced at Rosy, and she was looking at her so strangely. Tears fell from her eyes.
Kody hurried over to her table. “Oh, Rosy, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“No, dear! You should have. That was beautiful,” Rosy said.
She stood and hugged Kody.
Long minutes passed before Kody could return to her own table.
* * *
A sketch artist was going to be called in, but it turned out not to be necessary.
When the body reached the morgue—which happened while Liam was still deep in paperwork and Brodie was reading documents—she was identified by one of the medical assistants, and the identification was accepted as correct.
Her name had been Mathilda Sumner. She lived in Marathon. By day, she worked in the local grocery.
Two nights a week, she played at Tortoise Cove, a little sea shanty bar on Grassy Key. She had been born in Miami and moved down to the Keys just about ten years earlier.
Liam listened to the call from the station and then repeated what he had learned to Brodie. “She was single—no family left, not that anyone knew about. She was well liked—loved where she worked, both in the grocery store and when she played.”
“Was she down here with friends? Why wouldn’t they have reported her missing?” Brodie asked.
“Well, so far, we have nothing on that. She was just recognized by one of the morgue staff as soon as she came in. She was very upset—she didn’t know her that well, but said she always had a smile for everyone, and just really loved living in Marathon. This had to have been some kind of an accident.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Brodie said. “She was out with friends, and she fell overboard—and no one wants to report it because they’re afraid that they might be accused of manslaughter or worse?”
“That is possible.”
“Someone had to know that she was going out—that she was doing something.”
“I’ll probably have to take a trip back up to Marathon to find out,” Liam said. “We’ll put out an appeal to the public.”
Liam parked in the public lot near the hotel and the Drunken Pirate. “I’m guessing the reception will be winding down soon,” Liam said. “It was good of the owners and management to plan this in memory of Cliff. But I don’t suppose they can let it go on forever.”
They were walking in when Brodie’s phone rang. He noted that the call was coming from Krewe headquarters, and he answered it quickly.
“Angela?”
“It’s me.”
“Please, say you have something.”
“I went through the names you gave me. Then I started cross-referencing with the names you had given me that had to do with the sinking of the Victoria Elizabeth. It wasn’t easy,” Angela said. “Very confusing following the lineage.”
“But?”
“One of the names on the list of locals connected to Cliff Bullard has a relationship to the ship.”
“Who? How?”
“Gonzales,” Angela said.
For a moment, Brodie’s mind was blank. Then he remembered. Of course, Mauricio Ferrer had addressed one of his letters to a Senhor Gonzales. Gonzales had answered; he had been interested in buying the slaves who had perished on the doomed ship.
“You found a real connection?” he asked, very impressed. He hadn’t even given Angela a first name; he hadn’t had one to give her.
“Yes, I researched rich men living in the south during the months before the ship went down. Hector Gonzales had a spread of land in southern Georgia. He already owned a hundred plus slaves and hundreds of acres. He grew cotton. I was able to find a few pieces on him. He was hated—even by his neighbors. One of them sent a complaint to a local politician. He was appalled by the man’s treatment of his slaves, which, of course, Gonzales considered to be his property—his to use as he would. Anyway, the neighbor, one Samuel Martin, stated in very eloquent language that no man should treat a mule so cruelly. Now, Samuel Martin was a slave owner himself. But it seems, according to records, he must have, at the least, been a kind man. His plantation—burned to the ground in the Civil War, during Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’—was just as massive, but his records showed that he actually allowed his people to work only so many hours and that he never allowed families to be split up. I believe for his time, he was trying very hard to be a moral man.”
“He was, in his way, but...what about Gonzales?”
“Hector Gonzales married a young woman named Massie Belaire. They had one daughter.”
“Back in the early 1800s,” Brodie said.
“Yes. They were too old to fight, really, but both Gonzales and Martin created companies and fought in the Civil War. They were both killed in the fighting. Gonzales’s wife and daughter were his heirs, but...by 1865, they were heirs to nothing. Anyway, Gonzales’s daughter moved out to California. She married a man named Tillerson. She also had one daughter.”
“Angela...”
“I’m getting to it. Gonzales’s granddaughter married a man named Worth.”
“Worth?” Brodie repeated. Worth.
As in Bill Worth?
“It’s a common enough name,” Brodie said.
“Yes, it is,” Angela said. “And God knows, this could just be happenstance. The man may not know anything about all this. Gonzales’s great-grandson is a William Worth. He moved to Seattle. The family was in that area from that time on. We’re talking about something that occurred almost two-hundred years ago. Generation after generation.”
“That’s what I mean. Angela—”
“You asked me. I researched. Like I said, nearly two centuries have passed since the sinking of that ship. We usually know something about our parents and even our great-grandparents. Gonzales was Portuguese, but over two hundred years in America, any family winds up mixed to the gills. Brodie, I followed a paper trail. Okay, a paper trail now a digital trail, but the documents are listed at various churches and in county registers. I was careful. Your William Worth is a descendant of the Senhor Gonzales who was interested in buying the Victoria Elizabeth’s wretched human cargo.”
“Maybe Ferrer wanted the truth out—but Worth didn’t,” Brodie said.
“Possibly,” Angela said.
“But even so...decades and generations have passed. A man living and working down here wouldn’t have any reason to kill over that—even if someone found out. I mean, you had to dig and dig to find that fragment of history, right?”
“I did. It was tricky. I’m good at what I do. Naw, really, not to totally leave all realms of humility, I’m very good. Someone else, of course, could have come upon the information, but it wouldn’t have been easy.”
“Still, it’s a motive,” Brodie said.
“Like I said, family trees are like spiderwebs. Especially in America—that’s one of our greatest strengths—everybody may be just about everything by the time three or four generations have come and gone. Mr. Worth may not even know that he has any affiliation with the ship.”
“He may not, but it’s definitely worth looking at,” Brodie said.
“There’s something else,” Angela said. “And,” she told him, hesitating slightly, “you may not like this piece of information.”
“Whatever it is, shoot.”
“I culled information of the ten men on the Sea Life crew. I looked up anything that resembled a boat owned by any of them. Only two men in the group actually reside in Key West.”
“Right,” Brodie said evenly. “Ewan Keegan, and Josh Gable.”
“Yes. None of the other men live in the Keys. Both Ewan and Josh keep boats. And both of them have GPS systems—a great safety measure. Anyway, on the night when Arnold Ferrer’s body was taken down into the hold of the wreck, Ewan Keegan’s boat was out on the water. That doesn’t even mean that Ewan was aboard—but his boat was out near the dive site. I can send you the information I was able to pull up. I’ll get it all into your email.”
“Thank you,” Brodie told her.
“I’m sorry.”
“He may not be guilty of anything—except for omission. But then again, it’s possible to see omission as a lie,” Brodie said.
He hung up; Liam was watching him.
Brodie sighed inwardly and shared the information he’d been given.
“Time to check into both men more closely,” Liam said. “But we can’t stay here long. Arnold Ferrer’s ex-girlfriend, Adelaide Firestone, has arrived—she called the station. I told my officers to let her know that we’ll come to her. I take it you want to meet her.” He paused. “We—as in the police—were going to put her up at one of the big chain hotels on the south side of the island—but she received a better offer.”
“A better offer?”
“She’s going to stay at Bev and Dan’s bed-and-breakfast—the Sea Horse. Apparently, Bev was taken with Arnold, and she and Dan want to do anything they can to help us. They thought that offering his ex-girlfriend a place to stay that was comfortable, in Old Town, and near Arnold’s last place, would be the right thing to do.”
“I believe Bev and Dan are at the funeral reception,” Brodie said.
Liam nodded. “They might still be here. They have a live-in manager who handles things when they’re out.”
“Let’s pay our respects—and then go meet Miss Firestone.”