“I’m the black widow of Black Harbor.” Kole looked professorial as he repeated Eleanor’s words, standing in front of a makeshift suspect board. The three of them—he and Kole plus Morgan—were in Hudson’s living room again. Kole tapped on Eleanor’s square on the wall, which he’d drawn with a dry-erase marker. “Think she was trying to tell us something?”
Beside him, perched pretzel-legged on the back of his couch, Morgan crunched down on a piece of pepperoni pizza. He’d picked her up a half hour earlier. She left her house wrapped in the same afghan she’d worn the last time she was in his car. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her cheeks tearstained. But when he asked what was wrong, she wouldn’t answer. She was so cold and so quiet on the ride back to his place, he thought he might have dreamt up the events of yesterday—when he’d led her upstairs and she’d ridden him like a wave and sunk her teeth into his collarbone.
“That she killed her husband?” Hudson took a bite of his own pizza, leaned forward to catch the slipping cheese with his plate. The Dominos box lay open on the dining room table; it was the first time in two years it had been used for anything besides storing Hudson’s folded laundry and whatever he didn’t feel like putting away.
Kole shrugged. “That’s the definition of a black widow, right? A lady who keeps killing her husbands-slash-male-suitors?”
“Are you saying Don might be next, then?” He hoped that’s what Kole was alluding to, and that he wasn’t about to construct a theory regarding a romance between Eleanor and Garrison being the reason Garrison was in the ground. If Kole thought that could even be a remote possibility, then he hadn’t known Garrison very well at all.
“Of course he could be,” said Kole, and Hudson felt the tension in his shoulders release. “Anyone could be. Or no one. It’s also possible that Garrison and Eleanor were knocking boots and Don hired someone to put an end to it. He doesn’t exactly look like the type of guy who’s going to do his own dirty work.”
Hudson winced. He felt his cheeks redden, his palms sweat. “No, it isn’t possible.”
“Look, don’t fall into the trap of mythologizing someone because they’re dead,” warned Kole. “We’re exploring all avenues, remember?”
Quiet fell. Hudson glanced at Kole and noticed how his gaze had cut to Morgan. She’d hardly said a word since she got here, except to Pip, who she’d bent down to coo at before even taking off her boots.
Now, he looked away from her and locked onto her square on the wall instead, drawing an imaginary dashed line between hers and Bennett’s. She’d lied about going out for a drink with him that night. Why was she protecting him? What was she hiding?
Finally, Morgan spoke. “Didn’t she get, like, a ten-million-dollar life insurance policy after Clive died?”
“Eleven,” Hudson and Kole offered simultaneously.
She let a beat of silence pass, and then: “What happens if you take out a life insurance policy on someone and they turn up alive? Do you have to pay that money back?”
Kole’s brows scrunched toward each other. “Good question. I know you can legally declare someone dead after seven years—you know, if there’s no hide nor hair of them—which is what Eleanor did, obviously.”
While Kole talked, Hudson searched on his phone. He read out loud: “If the person who was declared dead is later discovered to be alive, the insurance company has the right to reclaim the death benefit proceeds … plus interest.”
Morgan cringed. Kole fiddled with the marker like it was a fidget spinner. “If Clive really is alive,” he said, “I’d say the prospect of losing eleven million dollars would be a pretty compelling reason to shut up the only person who knew about it.”
“Garrison.” The name tumbled from Hudson’s mouth. He looked up, catching Kole’s eye, and he knew they were on the same page.
Kole turned toward the wall. “Scenario One,” he said as he wrote it to the left of the boxes. “Clive ran off with his mistress—your mom”—he looked at Morgan—“and the two have been living it up in Belize or wherever all these years.” He jotted down Clive + Ava and drew what Hudson assumed was supposed to be an island. “Garrison discovers that Clive is still alive, communicates this to Eleanor, who then tells Don. They take care of Garrison so the information never gets out.”
Hudson nodded along. It was plausible; of course it was. His mind went back to the cold case box stuffed full of Clive’s financials; the monthly withdrawals for ten thousand dollars and the one that had been skipped around the same time he’d reported his Porsche stolen. He’d be willing to bet the withdrawals were money orders sent to Ava to keep her quiet about the affair—and their shared child. But why had he stopped? Had Eleanor found out? According to his bank statement, it certainly didn’t look like he’d run out of money, but Hudson also knew that just because a bank account looked in the black, didn’t mean there wasn’t a sucking hole of debt in a different one.
“The Widowmaker,” he said.
“What about it?” Kole asked.
“Do you think it was really stolen?” He filled Kole and Morgan in on what he’d just run through in his mind concerning Clive’s recurring withdrawals.
Kole turned to the wall. He tapped Clive’s square with the marker. “You saying our boy Clive might have committed insurance fraud?”
Hudson nodded. “Eleanor’s a smart lady. I doubt she gave Clive total control of the accounts. She would have caught on to the fact that a mysterious ten grand was disappearing every month. After all, she knew he had mistresses and that Ava wasn’t the only one. But money orders are near impossible to trace. He might have been sending it to Ava to keep her quiet.”
“Hush money,” said Kole. “Sounds about right. So, Ava ditched Black Harbor, leaving little Morgan with her POS sister, and demanded Clive send the money directly to her account so he wouldn’t know she skipped town.”
“Right,” said Hudson, though he was still working through the scenario. The pieces seemed to fit.
“And you think Eleanor found out?” Kole asked.
Hudson shrugged. “Something threw a wrench into it.” As soon as he said it, he thought of the torque wrench in the back of the Porsche. Could Clive Reynolds have killed the victim in the passenger seat? And if not Clive, then who? He pushed the question aside for a moment and caught his bearings. “Something happened. Perhaps Clive decided he needed Ava out of his life for good, so he was going to pay her off. Or maybe Ava found out about another mistress and gave Clive an ultimatum. Either way, the most likely scenario is that Clive needed a large amount of money to send to Ava.” He glanced at both Kole and Morgan to check that they were in agreement. “If you owe money, the easiest and quickest way to raise it is to cash in on your most valuable asset.”
Kole was nodding. “He knew no one would believe he’d sold that Porsche. So he phoned it in as stolen.”
“He was up at his cabin at the time for the Fourth of July. He made the insurance claim on the fifth, after they returned to Black Harbor.”
“So, who’d he get to do his dirty work?” Kole asked. “You know, drive the car into the lake.”
Hudson’s eyes roamed the squares on the wall. Christopher. Blake. Bennett. Don. David. He wasn’t trying to be chauvinist, but he didn’t find it at all likely any of the women could have beat a man to death. And yet, Eleanor had been quite the athlete once. In the 1970s and ’80s, she’d been the star hitter for an All-American women’s softball team, according to what he’d dug up in several online articles. If she could swing a bat, she could swing a wrench.
But Eleanor had been up at the cabin that weekend—there was photographic evidence to prove it. And so had Clive, David, and Christopher. Bennett was simply too young to have done such damage, and neither Don nor Blake was in the picture yet. His gaze drifted lower, to the bottom left corner of the wall, where Muntz’s and Tobias’s squares buddied up next to each other. Ice formed in the pit of his stomach. Tobias had been walking the razor’s edge of the law since the day he was born. Hudson wouldn’t put it past him to have taken a payout in exchange for dumping the Porsche.
But, was Tobias capable of murder? Before Hudson even finished asking himself the question, he remembered the sensation of drowning and seeing Tobias stand over him on the broken pier. The answer was crystal clear. Yes.
“So, our hypothesis is that Clive needed a large chunk of money to pay off Ava,” Kole recapped. “He committed insurance fraud by hiring someone to get rid of his Porsche and then reported it as stolen.”
“Yes,” said Hudson.
“Not bad. I’m with you.”
“Unless he wasn’t paying her off,” said Morgan. She unfolded her legs and let her stockinged feet swing over the floor. “Maybe he was cashing in so they could start a new life together.”
Kole exhaled, nodded. Hudson could see his eyes moving swiftly across the board, working to break its code. He uncapped the marker and wrote Scenario 2. “Or,” he offered, “let me take you back to circa the year 2000. The world has just avoided Y2K, crime in Black Harbor is steady but rising to the force of nature it is today, and Eleanor’s getting hot and heavy with Don. She wants her husband out of the picture, but she also wants to keep his money and not destroy her family. She takes out the notorious eleven-million-dollar life insurance policy on Clive, Don takes care of him, and seven to eight years later, once he can officially be declared dead, they cash in.” He paused to finish drawing arrows and Xs and dotted lines. “If—twenty years later—Garrison caught on to the fact that Don killed Clive, well, that would be reason enough for Don to kill Garrison.” Finished, Kole wore a triumphant smile.
“You seem dead set on Don having killed Garrison,” observed Morgan.
“I don’t know about dead set,” said Kole, “but pretty damn close, yeah.”
“Why?”
Kole glanced at Hudson. “Shit, we forgot to show her what we found.” He walked over to Morgan and held out his phone, showing the last photo in his camera roll. Hudson leaned over her shoulder to study the picture again, recognizing the epoxied floor in Clive’s classic car showroom. There, next to the tire of the Chevy Camaro Kole had pretended to admire, was a light spray of black. So close that they were touching, Hudson felt Morgan stop breathing.
It was the silhouette of a shoe.
“Is that…?” she asked.
“Yep,” said Kole, zooming in to show the flecks of spray paint. “Let me ask you this, Morgan. If I lift my foot up like this to paint my shoe,” he picked up his foot, “where’s some of the paint gonna go?”
“On the floor, probably.”
“In the shape of…?”
“Your shoe.”
“Exactly.” He slid his phone back into his pocket. “Don has a motive to kill Garrison. And a means to do it.”
Hudson considered Don’s running shoes: gold with red tips, they resembled bullets with tracers. If all of his shoes were as conspicuous, he might have spray-painted them to avoid recognition. Criminals covered up logos and identifying marks all the time.
“If Clive is alive, Don has a motive,” said Morgan. “But if he’s dead…” She shrugged.
Hudson watched Kole chew on that. Morgan was right. Don’s wealth was fragile and dependent on Eleanor. But if Clive was dead and the life insurance policy secure, Don might just be sitting pretty. It would be in his best interest to simply lay low and enjoy a life of luxury.
“If Clive is alive,” repeated Hudson, “couldn’t he have killed Garrison? If he knew he was on to him.”
“That’s interesting,” said Kole. He tapped the marker cap to his chin. “That’s really fucking interesting. He might still know the code to his own garage, too. If Eleanor didn’t change it after all these years.”
“Or had someone else do his dirty work for him,” suggested Hudson.
“Talk to me, Goose. Who you thinking?”
Hudson wet his lips. “Bennett.”
Kole wrote Scenario 3 on the wall and Hudson heard Morgan’s sharp, almost inaudible intake of breath, and he knew he’d done it; finally tugged on the right thread to get her to tell the truth about that night. He thought back to their first conversation in his car, when she’d lied about Garrison saying something to her. She’d lied again, when she’d omitted the part about going out with Bennett after the party. Eleanor had dimed her out this morning.
Morgan held his gaze. He could see a tremor course through her body as she fought the urge to run. He wouldn’t let her, not this time.
“The way I see it, there are two hypotheses.” Kole jotted down bullet points beneath Bennett’s square. “Like Don, Bennett is dependent on Eleanor’s wealth. Who knows how much debt he has wrapped up in his private equity business. If he catches wind that his dad is still alive, he might want to get rid of Garrison before he brings this fact to light, and all that life insurance money goes bye-bye.”
“Plus interest,” added Hudson.
“Plus interest. Or,” added Kole, “Clive is alive and begged a favor of his favorite son.”
“He didn’t, though,” said Morgan.
“How do you know?” asked Kole.
“Because we were together, at Beck’s.” Morgan shot Hudson a look that hovered between apologetic and annoyed. “He asked me to get a drink with him after the party that night. I did. And his shoes weren’t spray-painted then. According to your picture, the suspect spray-painted his shoes in Eleanor’s garage.”
Kole closed his eyes, massaged his temples. “Why are we just hearing about this now?”
“And then you stopped to get gas on your way home from the bar,” said Hudson.
“Yes.”
“But there are three different gas stations between your house and Beck’s.” The volume of his voice surprised him. “You went clear across town to go to that specific gas station. Why?”
He watched Morgan dart a look at Kole to save her. But Kole just stood in front of the suspect board, working his jaw. His eyes looked softer though, less frosted over. When had the two of them switched roles of good cop/bad cop?
“I … took a detour,” Morgan stammered.
“To where?” he asked.
She turned her wrist over to reveal the top of the skeleton key, and he knew. “Home.”
The house on Winslow Street was Morgan’s home, thought Hudson, no matter how hard she tried to forget it. And someone knew. Someone wanted her to go back there.
“I just waited in my car,” said Morgan. “I thought about going inside. But I couldn’t do it. Not in the dark. And then, on Christmas Day…” She leaned over the edge of the couch and reached into her canvas bag, extracting what looked like a portable DVD player. She handed it to him. The thing felt like a block of ice.
“The Ruins is outside your jurisdiction?” she asked.
Hudson nodded.
“What is this, 2001?” said Kole. He crept closer, his eyes no doubt fixing on the Post-it note stuck to its base. Wanna play?
Facing them, Morgan snaked her pale arm over the screen and hit the Play button.
“Jesus,” Hudson whispered when it was over. Kole pressed Play again and watched it a second time. “What’d you stick him with?” he asked, his eyes not leaving the screen.
“Ketamine,” she answered.
“Branding iron?”
The hiss of the man’s flesh was audible again. “Yes.”
“You always brand them on the neck?”
Morgan nodded. “What harm is there to being branded if no one can see it?”
“He had a mark on his neck.” Kole’s soft tone implied he was talking to himself, but Hudson recalled the description given by the Fast Mart cashier; that, along with Muntz’s statement, was enough to arrest Tobias, whose throat was inked with a snowflake tattoo.
“I think what Morgan’s trying to tell us, Hudson, is that whoever shot Garrison could very well be the person in this video. Is that correct?” Kole’s eyes flicked toward Morgan, who shrugged. “So, the question we need to answer is: Who goes to this place? Had to be either a cop or a criminal.”
Hudson frowned. “He was wearing a camera.”
“One of those button cameras, I bet.” Kole turned to Morgan again. “We use them over in SIU sometimes. Our informants wear them. It fits in the buttonhole of your shirt.”
“That’s why I thought it might have been one of you,” Morgan admitted. “A cop, like, shutting me down or something.”
“Well, he was white, or light-skinned,” said Kole. “Which rules out Garrison.” Hudson flinched, again, at the heinous consideration of Garrison setting foot in a place like The Ruins. “And it definitely wasn’t either of us.” He tugged down his shirt collar to reveal the unmarred skin. Hudson considered doing the same, but stopped. She knew what he looked like.
“It might have been David,” offered Morgan. “David Reynolds. I’ve seen him and Carlisle at The Ruins before.”
“The black sheep.” Kole scratched his chin with the marker cap. “Clive Reynolds’s scorned son, passed by for heir to the family business.”
“He didn’t want it,” said Hudson.
Kole tilted his head. “Even if that’s true, it doesn’t sound like Clive even asked him.”
“But why kill Garrison?” Hudson asked. “What would have been his motive?”
Kole looked at Morgan. “That’s what she’s going to find out. That invitation to the cabin still open?”
Morgan shook her head. “I emailed Bennett just before I came here. Said I couldn’t go.”
“Well, tell him you had a change of heart.”
“I’m not going with him. He’s—”
“Your half brother, I know. Just don’t fuck him and you’ll be fine. As for us…” He turned back to the whiteboard. “There’s someone else we’ve been neglecting.”
Hudson’s gaze followed Kole as he tapped on Muntz’s square. “Someone on this wall coerced this asshole to frame Hades. Now, who was it, and how are we gonna get Jabba the Hutt to talk?”
The idea that came to Hudson was so absurd, yet so perfect, it almost took his breath away. “We’re going to squeeze him.”