“Hey, slow down.” Fabio fell into step beside her on the way to the beach. He carried two cups of coffee and a paper bag. “I saw you when I was at Café Beanz. You haven’t seen Thayer lately, have you?”
“Yes, I have,” she said. “I kicked he and Mick out of my house an hour ago. They were going for breakfast.”
“They were in the same room in your house together?” Fabio’s eyes widened. “What were they doing there?”
She sighed. “You really don’t want to know.”
“Try me.” He steered her onto the sand.
Gilda kicked off her flip-flops to carry them. “Mick apparently came into my bedroom last night to hide from the world then Thayer broke into my house this morning when I didn’t answer the door. He caught Mick outside my bedroom door trying to get his clothes back. What was he doing there anyway?”
Fabio smirked. “He was supposed to watch your house while I got coffee.”
Glad to see her favorite log unoccupied, she sat on the names, dates and initials etched in the log’s weathered surface and sipped her shake. “Why are you being nice to me?”
He eased down next to her and reached into the bag. “Because I think you’re stuck in the middle of a bunch of lunatics and could use a friend.”
“Why would you call them lunatics?” She eyed the muffin cradled in his hands. Chocolate chunk. A solid dose of chocolate would go a long way.
“Why do you think?” Fabio held out the muffin. “Want one? Thayer can get his own.”
“No, thanks. Walter was a teacher who liked little girls. Erik wanted his own school but went about it the wrong way,” she said. “I was the one who found both their bodies. Doesn’t that make me look guilty?”
He shook his head and handed her the muffin anyway. “No, and to be honest, none of the guys you work with suspected you, so we never did either.”
“Never?” She raised her eyebrows. “Seriously?”
“You sound oddly disappointed, which scares me a whole lot.” Fabio sipped his coffee. “Finding two dead bodies in a row does look pretty suspicious, but you had no motive. When the murderer knocked you out cold, we knew we were right.”
Waves lapped the shore and tourists slowly invaded the beach. She admired the confidence of anyone who wore skimpy bathing suits, despite being overweight, since she didn’t have that kind of intestinal fortitude, even after losing twenty pounds. She still had a lot more confidence to gain.
“Mick never doubted you.” Fabio broke the silence.
She fumbled what was left of the muffin. “Mick? Why would you say that?”
“It was no coincidence I ended up in Sandstone Cove, you know. He and I trained together in Detroit before I became a cop. Mick got his black belt then his second degree black belt and opened the school.” He bowed his head. “I wanted to train with Mick again, but we had a falling out. When I called the other day, he said never to show up at his school again.”
“That was you?” Gilda asked. “The call that came from Mick’s condo the day Walter died. I thought it was Chloe.”
Fabio scratched the back of his neck. “No, I made that call from his condo. Chloe said someone broke in. At first, she thought it was Mick. I tried to calm her down. Now he’s convinced I’m her latest fling.”
“She’s no good for him anyway, or you for that matter.” The breeze blew her hair across her face. “Why would Mick break into his own condo?”
“Because she’d changed the locks that day and told him to take a hike.” Fabio frowned. “Mick insisted it wasn’t him. When I looked around, it looked like someone wanted to plant evidence, which probably would’ve netted us a killer if Chloe hadn’t contaminated it first.”
“Contaminated what?”
“Evidence.” He rubbed his hand across his face and smeared a bead of sweat. “A fabric scroll written in Japanese with some pieces cut out. You might know where it came from. Mick had one just like it at one time. Chloe found it and threw it in the trash.”
“A scroll?” She sat up straighter. “Was the fabric rust colored with Japanese writing?”
He raised both eyebrows. “Yeah.”
Gilda grew lightheaded. “The Four Possessions of the Samurai. It went missing from the school the day Walter died. Mick and I...” She trailed off aware she and Mick had compromised both pieces they’d found.
“The Four Possessions? Of course. HILT. Honor, integrity, loyalty,...I don’t remember the last one. Why didn’t anyone mention the missing scroll earlier and what does it have to do with you and Mick?”
“The last one is Time,” she said. “The scroll didn’t seem important until Walter’s funeral. Mick and I kind of found them.”
“Where did you kind of find them?”
Gilda winced. “At the funerals. ‘Honor’ was in Walter’s breast pocket. Erik held ‘Integrity’ in his hands. We guessed the killer used them as reasons to eliminate people at the school. The scary part is there are only three black belts left and two kanji.”
“Which means time is running out.” Fabio crumpled his muffin wrapper and dropped it into the paper bag. “We need to keep an eye on all three black belts.”
“How many suspects do you have aside from the black belts?” she asked.
“A couple.”
“You’re a bad liar,” she said. “If it helps, I didn’t notice the scroll was missing until after the police were gone. It usually hung in the change room.”
“The truth is, Thayer and I are spinning our wheels. We’ve checked out alibis and backgrounds, but until we get stuff from the lab, we have no proof.” He paused. “Do you have any suspects?”
Gilda finished the last of her protein shake and hoped her surprise wasn’t too obvious. “The killer has whittled down my suspect list. Do you think Xavier, Mick, or Razi did it?”
“You forgot one.” Fabio studied her like he was waiting for a reaction. “Yoshida’s a black belt too. Don’t you think anyone would want to kill him?”
“I’m sure there’s a long line.”
He nodded. “Which tells me there are some issues we haven’t heard about yet. I’m going to do some research. Yoshida has access to the school and to Mick and the others. To you, too, Sherlock, so watch your back.”
Sherlock. Fabio definitely spoke to Mick already. Apparently, he and Mick had either made up or called a truce until the murders were solved.