Seventh Chapter Page 4

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  After lunch, Jack and I went back to the newspaper. We’d brought Kizzy to work with us, so she’d been waiting for our return. We dropped her off at his cabin before we headed to the church, which was a good call because we ended up being there for the rest of the afternoon. Pastor Branderman didn’t know what Bosley had uncovered, but he’d spent several days going through the diaries, photos, and church records in the basement room. It was the pastor’s opinion that Bosley was excited about whatever he’d stumbled upon.

  “There are a lot of really interesting things down here,” I said after we’d been at it for at least two hours. “Not only are there all these old books and handwritten journals, but there are letters, baptism, marriage, and death certificates, and tons of old photos. I know we don’t have a lot of time, but I bet we can use some of the information in here to run a compelling historical account of the island as a community interest piece. Maybe even a series of articles that look back at the events that shaped its destiny.”

  “I like the idea,” Jack said. He paused and set the pile of photos he’d been looking through to the side. “The problem we have today, however, is the sheer volume of data in this room. Everything seems interesting and possibly even relevant, but I haven’t come across anything I’d consider shocking.”

  “Yeah.” I stood up and stretched. “Even if we did come across a photo or journal entry that might prove to be scandalous, we wouldn’t know what we were looking at without a frame of reference.”

  Jack sat back in his chair and stretched out his legs. “It stands to reason that if Bosley found something scandalous, he would have notes about it, even if they were vague. Even if he only jotted down a few sentences to remind himself of something he wanted to research further or maybe verify. Rick said he and George went through the notes they found in Bosley’s cabin, but what if he had notes someplace else? Somewhere hidden, perhaps.”

  “Makes sense. He probably wouldn’t leave important notes just sitting on his desk for anyone to find. But where would he hide them?”

  Jack frowned. “Rick said he called the church on multiple occasions, but he didn’t mention what other numbers he might have called during the same time. It might be a good idea for him to take a look at all Bosley’s phone records. Do we know if his cell phone was found?”

  I shook my head. “His phone wasn’t found on him, nor was it in his cabin or his car. The GPS locator isn’t working, which means the phone is either turned off or it’s been destroyed.”

  “It’s probably at the bottom of the ocean,” Jack said.

  I looked up from the file I’d begun to thumb through. “Probably. His computer is also missing, although George did say Bosley backed everything up online. Of course, that won’t do us any good unless we can find the storage provider and the password. George is working on that, but he wasn’t confident about his ability to get into the file when I spoke to him. Our best bet is probably still trying to figure out where he’d been and who he spoke to.”

  Jack stood up and began to walk around the room. We’d been working for a long time. I really needed to stretch as well. He paced across the room and then back again, deep in thought. Eventually, he said, “Maybe we’re going at this the wrong way. We’re focusing on trying to figure out the content of Bosley’s research, but maybe we should be trying to figure out who he’s been with and who had the opportunity to kill him. If he was dumped in the ocean, that means he must have been on a boat at some point. Maybe we should head over to the marina. It’s a busy place. Someone must have seen something.”

  I bit my lip, tilting my head slightly as I considered that. “Maybe. The marina has security cameras to provide protection for the expensive boats docked there, but they would also record who was around. If Bosley was dumped from a boat that had been docked at the marina, we should be able to find out which one he boarded and with whom, but I’m sure Rick must be checking on that. The reality is, there are vessels secured to private docks all over the island. If someone used one of those boats to take Bosley out to sea, there wouldn’t be a record of it.”

  “It makes sense that anyone who docked at the marina would know about the cameras and avoid it for that reason.”

  “I think the killer must have used a private boat. According to Rick and the ME, Bosley would have been killed sometime after dark on Friday. It would be easy to sneak him into a private boat and then dump him, assuming he was already dead. Of course, I suppose a boat would be a good place to kill someone as well, so that might also be where he died.”

  Jack nodded. “If the boat was out to sea, there’d be no one around to hear him scream.”

  The very idea of that was making me queasy. I couldn’t understand what sort of a person would kill someone else no matter what the circumstances. I glanced at Jack, who was now engrossed in a ledger he’d sat back down to look through. “Did you find something?”

  Jack glanced up at me. “Maybe.” He flipped through a few more pages, frowning all the while. The ledger appeared to be old, the cover made of leather from what I could see, the pages yellowed with age.

  “Maybe?” I asked. “Can you be a bit more specific?”

  “Sorry. This appears to be some kind of directory. There are names recorded chronologically by either date of birth or the date an individual moved into the community the book was created to document. I’m not sure if the list relates to members of the church, or perhaps of the community as a whole.”

  “So it’s a record of first arrival?”

  “And more,” Jack corrected. “The initiating factor to be entered into the ledger seems to be birth or arrival, but there are other columns as well. There’s an entry if the person was baptized, married, or had children. There’s also a column for the date of their death.”

  “Is it a recent list?” I asked.

  Jack shook his head. “No. This covers people who were born in the late 1800s and early 1900s.” He turned back to the first page. “The first entry is Jeremiah Jensen, who was born on January 2, 1875. He was baptized on March 8, married on June 15, 1902, and died on December 4, 1913.” Jack turned to the back of the book. “The last entry is for a Caroline Barrington. She was born on December 28, 1924. There’s no record of anything other than her birth: no marriage or death.”

  “So they only kept records during this fifty-year span?”

  “Probably not. I assume there are other registers just like this one for the important events in the lives of individuals born before and after. I don’t know why the last few entries end with people’s birth. Maybe whoever kept the register updated stopped doing it in 1924. What I find interesting isn’t the continuity of the records but a recurring date: November 12, 1924.”

  “What do you mean? Were a bunch of people born on that date?”

  “No. That’s when a bunch of people died.”

  Chapter 3

  It was pouring rain when we left the church. We stopped by the newspaper to do a search for November 12, 1924, to see if there had been some cataclysmic event on that date that would explain a rash of deaths. Despite an exhaustive search, we were unable to find anything on either the local newspaper websites or in the sites of some of the larger newspapers around the country. Then we called Meg, who was full of information on local history. She couldn’t think of anything offhand but promised to do some looking in to it.

  Jack and I had no way of knowing whether whatever had happened on November 12, 1924, was relevant to Bosley’s death, so we didn’t want to spend a ton of time on it. We didn’t find anything else that seemed important at the church, but there was a ton of material to go through, so we planned to go back to the basement after we got the paper out tomorrow morning.

  “I’d suggest we stop for dinner, but with the rain coming down this way, it’s probably better to go out to the resort,” Jack said as we left the newspaper.

  I jumped as a bolt of lightning streaked across the sky. “Yikes. That was close.”

 
; “Too close,” Jack said as a rolling boom of thunder followed immediately after.

  “I guess we should have gone back to the resort earlier. The rain’s really coming down. Can you see the road?”

  “I can, but just barely.” Jack slowed the truck as he neared a low spot in the road. “It looks like the coast road is flooded. We’ll need to circle back around and take the marsh road. It’ll add fifteen minutes to the trip, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to cross here. It’s hard to tell exactly how deep the water is.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I said as the vibration following a clap of thunder shook the truck.

  I held on to the door handle as Jack slowly negotiated a U-turn. I’d hoped the rain would have let up by this point, but so far it was coming down in sheets that hit the already saturated earth. I actually liked storms, even ones with thunder and lightning, but the strikes from this storm were a bit too close for comfort, especially because we appeared to be the only vehicle on the road.

  I turned and looked at him. “If the coast road from town is flooded, I wonder if the resort road is flooded too. There’s that one low spot that always floods during heavy rain, especially if it comes during high tide.”

  Jack clutched the steering wheel with both hands. “I guess all we can do now is go on. If the road is flooded, we’ll head to my house on the bluff. Most of my stuff is still there, and I seem to remember a lot of your things are there as well. Kizzy is at the resort, but I’m sure Garrett and Clara won’t mind keeping her overnight if they need to.”

  “They won’t mind. Blackbeard, on the other hand, might have a fit,” I said, referring to Garrett’s parrot, who wasn’t at all fond of the energetic puppy.

  The road circled back and hugged the coastline, before it headed inland toward the marsh on the opposite side of the island. I looked out my window as giant waves crashed onto the shore. I’d only lived on the island for a little over a year, but the waves tonight could very well be the biggest I’d ever seen along this stretch. The resort was protected by a reef, but with the tide that was going on tonight, I worried about the cabins closest to the waterline.

  “The wind is going to play havoc with the decorations in town,” Jack commented.

  “As well as the ones a lot of folks have put up in their yards. I hope that house on Elm with all the giant blow-up ghosts took them down. Otherwise, I’m afraid they’ll be flying through the air tonight.”

  Jack slowed to avoid a lawn chair that blew across the road. “Where on earth did that come from?” he said. “There aren’t any houses for at least a quarter mile.”

  “The wind might have carried it quite a ways.” I squinted into the distance. “What’s that over there?” I pointed to a light that seemed to be reflecting off the clouds.

  Jack frowned. “It looks like a spotlight. Perhaps from a boat?”

  “Anyone out in a boat tonight would have to be crazy. Besides, it looks as if it’s coming from someplace closer to shore. Maybe even on the beach.”

  “Once we get around this next set of curves we should be able to get a better look at it.”

  I tried to focus on the light through the pounding rain. It was moving to and fro, as if the source of the light was being tossed around. Maybe it was a boat. “There.” I pointed at an object just beyond the edge of the beach.”

  “It’s a car,” Jack said, pulling over to the side of the road. “I’m going to check it out. Call Rick. If he doesn’t answer right away, call 911.”

  “Be careful,” I called after him as he opened his door, struggling to keep it from blowing clean off its hinges. After he closed the door, he bent his head and trudged through the heavy rain to the car, which appeared to be drifting farther and farther out to sea.

  I called Rick as a flash of lightning illuminated the sky less than a second before the crash of thunder vibrated around me. I hated the fact that Jack was out in the storm and wanted to call him back, but if there was someone in the car…

  “There’s been an accident,” I said to Rick as soon as he answered. “Jack and I are on the coast road maybe halfway between town and the resort road, at the spot where the road hugs the coast before heading inland. The road is flooded farther down toward the resort road, so we were trying to loop back around. I don’t know if anyone is in the car. Jack went to check.”

  “I’m on my way. The fire department will probably beat me to your location, so keep an eye out for them.”

  I switched on the truck flashers before I turned my attention to the door handle next to me. The rain was coming down so hard, I couldn’t see Jack from where I was sitting, but I anticipated he might need help. It took me a few tries to get the door open with the force of the wind pushing against it, but eventually, I was able to slip out into the rain.

  “Damn.”

  Talk about a hurricane. Okay, so the weather service wasn’t labeling it as such, but I didn’t want to be anywhere near the island if the real thing ever headed this way.

  I could see Jack as he waded into the water despite the huge waves crashing around him. The car was close to being under now, so if there was anyone inside, we didn’t have long to get them out before it was washed out to sea.

  “Is there someone inside?” I called to Jack, who was standing chest-deep in water.

  “The driver,” Jack called back as I began to wade to him. The surge from the sea was strong, and I was only an okay swimmer. I hoped I wasn’t the one who ended up being washed away.

  “Is he okay?” I yelled back.

  “Slumped over the wheel. I don’t even know if he’s still alive. He hasn’t responded to my attempts to communicate so far. Is help on the way?”

  “Yes, and Rick’s sending the fire department as well. They’re closer, so those sirens in the distance are probably them.” I jumped as lightning flashed overhead. “We really shouldn’t be in this water.”

  “Yeah.” Jack began wading back toward me. “I can’t get the door open anyway. We’ll need to find something to break the window.”

  “Do you know who it is?” I asked as we struggled through the churning water back to the beach.

  “I couldn’t see his face, but based on the car he’s driving and his overall build, I think it might be Billy Waller.”

  I ran my hands over my face in an attempt to wipe away my drenched hair. “I wonder how he ended up in the water.”

  “The back of the vehicle is totally smashed in. I think he was run off the road. If no one called it in or stayed around to help, I’m thinking it might have been intentional.”

  Although Billy Waller was another descendent of one of the founding fathers, he wasn’t involved in politics the way Sam was. Still, he wielded a certain amount of power on the island based on lineage alone. If someone had intentionally run Billy off the road just the day after Bosley’s body was found on the beach, I’d say it was highly suspect.

  “We need to find a big rock or something to break a window,” Jack said.

  I looked around, but all I could see was dark sky, pouring rain, and white sand. “This stretch is pretty free of rocks or anything else. Maybe the tire iron from the truck?”

  “That might work, although I can see the lights from the emergency vehicles,” Jack said. “They’ll probably be here before we can get back to the truck to get the tire iron. The car is drifting, but the waves are both pulling it out and pushing it back to the beach. I think it’ll be okay for a few minutes. Let’s go up and fill them in.”

  It took Rick, Jack, and the four firemen who’d responded to the 911 call working together to pull Billy from the vehicle. He wasn’t washed out to sea as we’d feared, and he didn’t drown, but, unfortunately, he didn’t make it either. By the time we made it back to the resort, the thunder and lightning had passed, and the rain had slowed to a drizzle. The forecast was for rain to continue through the night, but from what I could see, the worst of the storm was behind us.

  “More coffee?” Vikki asked.

&nb
sp; “Please,” I answered. When Jack and I had returned to the resort, we’d gone to his place, showered, and changed into dry clothes before heading to the main house to collect Kizzy. Vikki, Garrett, and Clara were all there, so we sat down at the kitchen table and caught everyone up while Clara scrambled us some eggs.

  “I just don’t understand who would run poor Billy off the road that way,” Garrett said. “He’s a nice man who’s done a lot to give back to the community. In fact, of all the descendants of the founding fathers, Billy’s the nicest. And he’s definitely the most genuine of the bunch. Sam Castle is all about politics, Ron Remand only seems to care about spending his grandpappy’s money, and Zane Carson seems to be a lot more interested in preserving the historical purity of the island than he is about working for and with the people who live here.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  “Zane is proud of his heritage and the place in local society his lineage provides for him, which is fine; I get that. If I was descended from a founding father, I’d be proud as well. But there have been times when preserving what’s always been has gotten in the way of doing what needs to be done now.”

  I frowned as I tried to follow this line of thought.

  “For example,” Garrett continued, “a while back, a man named Gordon Ringwald passed away. Gordon had lived on the island for a long time and wanted to give back to the community, so he left money in his will to build new ball fields for both adult and youth sports programs. Most considered that a very generous and timely gift. The island didn’t have any ball fields at all, and the local leagues had to travel to fields on the next island over to practice.”

  “Sounds like a nice gift.”