Клэр Донелли - Hiss And Tell

“So why don’t you return their property, Mr. Trehearne,” Wainwright said tiredly. “If they’re going to run a picture, it might as well be a decent one.”

Lawyer Quimby silently nodded, his frown lines even deeper.

With his jaw clenched, Lee Trehearne handed the camera bag over to Ken, who immediately slipped it over his shoulder. “So we’re free to go?”

“Yes, sir,” Wainwright responded. “I’m sure you’re eager to get back to Kittery Harbor as quickly as possible, so you’ll stay on land.” He turned to Ike. “You don’t mind sailing back alone, do you?”

“Fewer distractions,” Ike said.

A trooper escorted Sunny and Ken to the roadblock, where Sunny expected Ken would either call a cab or one of his local contacts. Instead . . .

“Will?” Sunny burst out in disbelief.

Will Price stood leaning against his black pickup, his Kittery Harbor Police Force badge prominently displayed from his jacket pocket. “You weren’t the only one Ken called tonight,” he said as he opened the door. “And since I could take the land route, I was here a while ago. As the local liaison officer, I was able to breeze right in, although when Trehearne finally saw me, he exiled me back here.”

“Did you see or hear anything?” Ken let Sunny in first and then climbed aboard with the camera bag cradled in his lap like a baby.

“Nothing I can say on the record,” Will replied, starting the truck’s engine. “So whatever I mention has to be strictly unofficial, with no attribution.” He shuddered briefly. “That’s all I’d need.”

“But with Wainwright here . . .” Ken shook his head. “It doesn’t look good.”

“The girl who died,” Sunny suddenly asked Will. “Did you get a look at her?”

“Only from the top of that cliff,” Will said.

“Could you make out the color of her bathing suit? Was it black?”

Will shook his head. “Purple.”

“Ken, one of the girls we saw here earlier was wearing a purple bikini,” Sunny frowned. “She came out of that house by the roadblock and walked in ahead of us.”

Ken’s thin face creased as he worked his memory, then he nodded. “You think it’s the same one, Sunny?”

“I’m not sure, but I saw that girl again later, at the pool party,” Sunny said, “with a drink in her hand and dancing. She looked pretty . . . uninhibited. Could it be a case of having more to drink than she could handle and wandering a little too close to the edge?”

“That’s the story Trehearne was trying to sell from the moment I got there.” Will looked disgusted. “And he was pretty heavy-handed about it. But one of the troopers—Hank Riker, a buddy of mine, we were in the same troop—left the roadblock and went down on the rocks for a look. He said there were bruises on her throat, the kind left by human fingers. He’s the one who called Wainwright and made Trehearne’s guys leave things as they were down there until the lieutenant arrived.”

“Good man,” Ken said. “It can’t have been easy standing up to the Kingsburys on their home ground.”

“I’ll tell you, I didn’t see any actual Kingsburys while I was in the compound.” Will shook his head as he drove. “All I saw was Trehearne and that Quimby guy—the lawyer. Maybe they’re all lying low.”

“Possibly it’s crisis management,” Sunny suggested. “No one around to say anything stupid.”

“Maybe,” Ken said, “but it looks guilty.” He leaned across Sunny to talk to Will. “Have you got a name for this girl?”

“Eliza Stoughton,” Will replied. “She apparently came as the date of the best man, Beau Bellingham. A couple of the young people turned up when the body was first found, and I spoke to a few of them before Trehearne shooed them all away from me. For a group that was supposed to be bonding, they broke pretty quickly into bride’s faction and groom’s faction.”

He glanced over at Sunny. “Several of the groomsmen mentioned that Eliza had been drinking pretty heavily and had gotten ‘kinda nasty’ as one of them put it, though Beau Bellingham dismissed it as the mojitos talking. Frankly, I wondered if he’d been hitting the mojitos, too. He couldn’t seem to take in the fact that Eliza was dead—kept talking about her in the present tense. He let slip, though, that Eliza’d also gotten into it with Tommy—that’s Thomas Langford Neal, the matron of honor’s husband.”

“Interesting situation there,” Ken said. “At one point, the Kingsbury watchers actually thought that the Neal boy and Priscilla Kingsbury might get married.”

“Ew, aren’t the two of them cousins?” Sunny said.

“Second cousins, same great-grandparents.”

“Still seems a little too close for comfort.” Sunny frowned, looking out the windshield at dense forest around them. Except for Will’s high beams, it was almost as dark on the road as it had been out on the water.

“Was Carson de Kruk there?” she asked Will.

Will shook his head. “Neither he nor Priscilla turned up. I’m guessing somebody probably convinced them not to.”

“Somebody named Trehearne?” Ken said.

“Could be,” Will agreed. “When he saw me talking with the wedding party, Trehearne nearly killed himself getting them away from me and getting me off to the roadblock.”

“That guy definitely wanted to control the story,” Sunny said. “His people looked ready to shoot us when they came out to Ike’s boat. And then they grabbed our cameras.”

“And now you say he was maybe trying to hide witnesses,” Ken added.

“So what do you think?” Sunny asked. “Is he just being fanatical about not letting the Kingsburys get any dirt on their shoes, or something else? The way you’re saying he tried to downplay the whole situation reminds me of how Sheriff Nesbit—”

She broke off with a gasp, turning to Will. “You said you were in a no-win situation. If everything went okay, Nesbit would come out smelling like a rose. But if anything went wrong, you’d get blamed. And now something has really gone wrong.”

Will sighed. “It’s not as if either of us could have predicted this. But yeah, I’m sure that after Nesbit and his cronies get done with it, the story will sound a lot worse. ‘How could a seasoned police officer let something so terrible happen at the pre-wedding meet and greet?’”

“So, after spending years pretending that Elmet County has never had a crime problem, now all of a sudden Nesbit will think it’s a big deal.” Sunny looked over at Will, who was busy keeping his eyes on the road. “You know what I think?”

“What?” he asked.

“I’m beginning to think that politics really stinks.”

That got a chuckle from Ken Howell. “I’ve been following politics for more than fifty years now, and it seems the field never gets much cleaner—or the participants any smarter.”

“Yeah, well, I’d rather deal with Frank Nesbit than the problem Lee Trehearne and Ellis Wainwright have on their hands.”

“You mean the publicity?” Ken asked.

Will shook his head. “They’ve got an apparent murder on a peninsula cut off from the mainland by a checkpoint and guards. It’s the equivalent of a very large locked room.”

“That’s right,” Sunny said. “Trehearne won’t be able to claim that some hobo or transient did it.”

“Not unless the guy turns out to be a former Navy SEAL,” Will laughed, and then went quiet. “So the suspects come down to staff, security, guests, or the family.”

“Who just happen to be super-influential. You’re right,” Ken admitted. “It’s going to be a real mess.”

“Well, if anybody can straighten it out, I’d bet on Wainwright,” Will said. “The guy is a pro. And who knows? In the end, the story may turn out to be sadly simple—people drinking too much, an argument that goes too far, and then it’s too late.”