The Weekenders (20 page)

“Ohhh.” Billy spun his racquet on his shoulder. “She's not sick though—right?”

“No, fortunately, she's sunburned but okay. Nate gave her some juice and fed her and got her back to the marina to pick up her insulin in time. Then he delivered her to me—along with an incredibly annoying and self-righteous sermon about what a neglectful, irresponsible parent I am.”

“Well, fuck him,” Billy said cheerfully.

“That's sort of what I told him,” Riley said. “Now, I feel kind of bad about that. I know he meant well.” She shrugged. “I'm really not having a good week.”

Billy gave her a hug. “I know. I'm sorry about all of this. So Mags is giving you a hard time?”

She nodded. “It's like she's testing just how far she can push my buttons.”

“How'd she manage to get out of the house without you seeing her? Did she figure out how to climb out that bedroom window onto the porch roof and slide down the drainpipe already? Damn! I didn't get around to that until I was fourteen or fifteen.”

“No, hopefully she hasn't figured that out yet. As far as I know, she just waited until Mama was gone and left.” She hesitated. “I haven't been sleeping, you know. Last night, after everybody else was in bed, I kind of wandered around the island on the golf cart. I had to see for myself where it happened. You know. Where they found Wendell's body.”

“I saw you coming back to the house,” Billy said. “I figured maybe it was something like that.”

“Yeah.” Riley sat on the bottom stair. “Last night, seeing the seawall, and the place where the sheriff marked it off, it shook me up. I couldn't get to sleep after I got home. When I finally did fall asleep—around dawn, I didn't wake up until nearly two! I didn't even know Maggy was gone until Nate rang the doorbell. He's right. I really am a shitty mother.”

“Oh, sis,” Billy said. “You know that's not true.” He sat down beside her on the stair, and Riley leaned her head on his shoulder.

“Maggy's just going through the kind of crap kids do at that age. Remember what a terror I was? All the schools I got kicked out of? And, look, I survived, right? Just remember she's a good kid who's going through a bad time. I'll talk to her if you want. Maybe she'll listen to me.”

“There's something I haven't told you yet,” Riley said, keeping her voice low. “A television reporter from Raleigh has been calling and leaving me voice messages. About Wendell. She claims the FBI is investigating Wendell's involvement in some bank failure on the coast.”

“The FBI?” Billy felt a cold shiver run down his spine. “You don't think it's true—do you?”

“I don't know,” Riley said. “I don't know anything about Wendell's business dealings. Except,” she said bitterly, “he somehow managed to lose our house here.”

“What are you going to do?” Billy asked.

“What can I do? I'm going to the courthouse first thing tomorrow, to try to figure out the foreclosure and to see if I can sniff out anything else Wendell might have been up to. I talked to a lawyer yesterday, but since I can't guarantee I can pay her a retainer, I guess I'm going to have to try and figure this stuff out for myself.”

Billy turned to look at his sister. “What can I do to help?”

She gave him a wan smile. “Keep Mama off my back. She's driving me nuts insisting we have to have what she calls a ‘proper memorial service' for Wendell. She's already got everything planned. And in the meantime, I don't even know when the coroner is going to release Wendell's body. I know it's awful, but I'm dreading this whole ordeal.”

“It's not awful,” Billy assured her. “Why don't you just tell Mama to back off? There's no law that says you absolutely have to have a funeral if you don't want one. Especially under the circumstances.”

“No law?” She snorted. “There's Evelyn Riley Nolan's law. It's the only one that matters on Belle Isle.”

 

22

Riley's cell phone shattered the peace of the morning. “Mrs. Griggs? This is Sheriff Schumann. I was wondering if you'd have time to answer some questions for me.”

It was barely 8 a.m. on Tuesday. Riley was sitting on the front porch at Shutters, sipping her coffee and watching a blue heron poking around at something in the front yard. It had rained overnight, and the air was cool and fresh. Butterflies hovered over the red salvia in her mother's flower beds, and the day would have seemed ripe with the promise of summer. If only.

“Yes,” she said cautiously.

“Is now a good time?”

She looked down at her cotton nightgown and bare feet and sprang from the wooden rocking chair.

“Right now?”

“I could come over there if you like. I'm at the ferry dock in Southpoint, as a matter of fact.”

“No, no,” Riley said quickly. “If it's all right with you, could I meet you someplace else? My daughter is still pretty upset about everything.”

“Have you had breakfast?”

“Just coffee,” Riley said.

“Then let's meet at Onnalee's. Say, in an hour?”

“I'll see you there,” she said.

*   *   *

Once again Riley was thankful for being an early riser in a house full of sleepyheads. Evelyn never came downstairs before 9:30 in the summer, and Maggy had barely shown her face outside her room since being put on double-secret probation.

She dressed quickly, not bothering with makeup or more than a cursory hair brushing, left a note saying she'd gone to town to run errands, and managed to make the 8:30 ferry.

Another reason to be an early bird was that she mostly had the boat to herself. The season had barely started, but the residents of Belle Isle had already eased into their relaxed summer schedule. Islanders who had jobs on the mainland had mostly taken the first ferry of the morning, and anybody who had shopping or errands to run in town would probably wait another hour or so.

After enduring the sympathetic inquiries of three or four neighbors, Riley found a sunny but deserted spot on the upper deck and barricaded herself behind the pages of the three-day-old
Wall Street Journal
she'd bought from a vending machine at the landing, for just that reason.

A shadow fell over the newspaper page. She looked up and saw Nate Milas, holding out a steaming cardboard cup of coffee.

He flashed her a hopeful smile. “We're fresh out of olive branches at the concession stand. I was hoping maybe this would do.”

She lowered the paper. “Is that supposed to be an apology?”

“It is. I was way, way out of line yesterday. I had no right to give you parenting advice.”

“True,” Riley said. She took the coffee, sipped, then wrinkled her nose. “Speaking of advice, you really should do something about the coffee on this boat. It's ghastly.”

“You're right,” he said. “That's on my to-do list. Dad wasn't what you'd call a coffee connoisseur. He'd drink Quaker State if you put enough milk and sugar in it. Mom has finally agreed to let me upgrade everything we serve in the concession stand. I'm meeting with a coffee roaster in Wilmington this morning to sample his beans. And, for your delectation—all-beef hot dogs, chicken sandwiches made from actual chicken breasts, and fresh fruit smoothies. Coming soon.”

“Fannncy,” Riley said. “But don't you dare mess with the french fries.”

“I would never,” Nate promised, pressing the palm of his hand to his chest. “Would you mind if I sat down?”

“Only if you don't cluck your tongue and tell me how I've been in your thoughts and prayers,” Riley said.

He sat down on the wooden bench beside her. “Yeah, all that sympathy stuff gets old pretty fast.”

“Between the curious stares and the whispers, I'm just about over this whole ordeal,” Riley said.

“Any news on the police investigation?” Nate asked. “Aw hell, there I go again, putting my worst foot forward. You don't have to answer that. I don't mean to be so nosy. But it's kinda natural, don't you think, for people to wonder? We haven't had a serious crime on the island in a long time.”

“I guess,” she conceded. “I'm meeting with the sheriff this morning. More questions.”

“Does he have any idea what the motive could have been?”

“If he does, he hasn't told me yet,” Riley said.

“He asked us for the passenger list for all of last week,” Nate volunteered. “I've been gone from the island so long, I didn't know half the names, but my mom didn't spot anybody who'd seem like a likely suspect. Mostly just the usual weekenders, folks who work on the island, day trippers, and a few people who were probably renters.”

“Was Wendell's name on the passenger list? They did find our boat tied up, in the marina, right near where they found his body, but I've been wondering when he came over because, as far as I knew, he was tied up in out-of-town business meetings right up until Friday when he was supposed to meet us here on the ferry.”

“No, his name wasn't on the list, and I was on the ferry a lot last week and never saw him. He had booked a ticket for the same boat as you, but obviously, never used it.”

“Because he was already dead by then,” Riley said soberly.

“Do you have a theory—about the motive?”

She looked away. “I think it must have had something to do with money. And maybe Belle Isle Enterprises.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Don't you ever read mysteries? There are three basic motives to kill somebody—sex, money, or revenge. Money's the most obvious—considering the fact that the bank was foreclosing on our house. And I know Wendell was really worried about the business. He had a lot riding on the north end development. He'd quit talking about it to me, though, because he knew I was totally opposed to what he was planning. Especially the hotel at Pirate's Point.”

Riley's smile was tight. “Although I'm not ruling out sex or revenge either.”

He gave her a quizzical look. “If you were opposed to the development, why didn't you fight him on it?”

“It's not that easy. My dad made Wendell president of Belle Isle Enterprises, and gave him voting control of the family corporation. My mother and brother were on his side, so I was outvoted. And anyway, I guess I was preoccupied with Maggy's diabetes diagnosis. That was a pretty scary time for me.”

“How's Maggy doing, by the way?”

“She's not currently speaking to me, because I put her under house arrest after you brought her home yesterday. And she really, really doesn't like you either. Other than that, I guess she's your typical twelve-year-old pain in the butt.”

“Am I getting too personal if I ask if you think Wendell was cheating?”

“I did wonder if there was somebody else, but he always denied it. We'd been basically living apart for about six months, but we'd been having problems for a while. We did the counseling thing, but it didn't take.”

“So that brings you back to where you started,” Nate said.

Just then the two-way radio he had clipped to the waist of his jeans squawked.

“Captain? Need you up here in the wheelhouse,” a scratchy voice said.

Nate winced. “I still can't get used to being called captain. Better go.”

He touched Riley's shoulder. “Hope things get worked out with the sheriff today. And if you need anything—well, give me a holler. I promise not to be sympathetic.”

*   *   *

The early-morning rush at Onnalee's Café had subsided. Riley spotted the sheriff sitting at a two-top toward the back of the room. He was studying the laminated plastic menu, but looked up as she approached.

A waitress with a coffeepot appeared—the same thin, harried-looking woman who'd been working at Onnalee's for as long as Riley could remember.

Riley took her seat and ordered her usual: cheesy scrambled eggs, sausage patty, rye toast.

The sheriff sipped his coffee and extracted a notepad from the pocket of his windbreaker.

“Thanks for meeting me here,” Riley told him, pouring creamer into her mug. “Do you have any news for me?”

“Nothing really. The coroner went over his notes with me yesterday. Like we thought, cause of death was blunt force trauma to the back of the skull,” he said.

“Was it … quick?” Riley felt bile rising in her throat. An unbidden image of Wendell, bleeding, in agony, alone on a cold, damp seawall flashed in her mind.

“Yes,” the sheriff said. “He was dead before he hit the water. You sure you want to hear all this?”

“I don't want to, but I need to. For my daughter.”

“Okay, well, as best we can tell, time of death was around midnight, Thursday. There was some minor bruising to his forehead, probably from where he hit the ground after the blow to his head.

“He'd had a couple of drinks an hour or so before he was attacked,” the sheriff went on. “Was that usual for your husband?”

“Yes. He usually drank scotch, although he liked red wine, too. He'd have wine with dinner, then a scotch or two during the evening,” Riley said.

“We found no unusual drugs in his bloodstream—I take it he was on medication for high blood pressure?”

“Was he? I didn't know that.” She felt ashamed that her husband had an ailment she wasn't even aware of.

The sheriff looked surprised. “When was the last time you saw your husband, Mrs. Griggs?”

“I'm not sure,” she admitted. “Maybe two, two and a half weeks ago? He texted and said he was coming by.”

“How did he act? Was he upset? Did he mention any particular problems?”

“He was in a rush. Maggy was at a friend's house, and I wanted him to stay until she got home, but he wouldn't. He claimed he had an out-of-town meeting and a plane to catch. I was annoyed because it had been two weeks since he'd seen his daughter.”