Parrish laughed ruefully. “Did I say that out loud? Oh my God. I’m turning into my grandmother.”
“You could do worse.”
His comment stopped her cold. “Aww. That’s so sweet.”
“She was a grand old lady,” Ed said, turning slightly pink.
Now she’d gone and embarrassed him. Ed Godchaux didn’t like people to think he was sentimental. Or sweet.
“I was just wondering why I never find sea glass here anymore. When we first started coming to the island, when David was a baby, I could always find a piece or two. Green, blue, brown, even purple. I had jars of the stuff. But I can’t remember the last time I found a piece. Can you?”
He gave that some serious thought. Everything was serious to Ed. She’d loved that about him when they’d first started dating. He’d been a seasoned thirty-two-year-old litigator, and she was just out of law school, at her first job, but he’d always treated her as an equal, never dismissed her as “just a girl.”
He removed his sunglasses and polished them on the hem of his golf shirt. Ed didn’t own any shirts without collars. He didn’t do T-shirts. Or jeans. A logoed polo shirt and well-tailored, lightweight, Orvis fly-fishing shorts were about as casual as he got.
“I think it probably has something to do with the fact that people don’t take glass to the beach anymore. They take plastic, or aluminum. And, luckily, people have gotten a little bit better about not littering and recycling.”
“True,” Parrish said.
“Tide patterns change, too. And remember, this beach was just dredged and renourished a couple of years ago, so that might have had an effect.” He pointed to a spot in the surf, about a hundred yards offshore. “That sand bar probably catches whatever glass or good shells might otherwise wash up here.”
“Very wise,” Parrish said. “It still makes me sad.”
“I think I saw one of your jars of sea glass out in the garage when I was putting up the screens. If you want, tomorrow I can come down early and sprinkle some around, and then you can hunt it up again.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“Of course. It would be like an Easter egg hunt.”
Parrish was astonished to find a lump in her throat. This was a side of Ed she hadn’t seen in a very long time.
She caught up to him and put an arm around his waist, kissing him on the cheek.
He seemed caught off guard. “What’s that for?”
“That’s a just-because kiss.”
He kissed the top of her head, and then sighed.
“What?”
“I was thinking about Wendell. Poor bastard.”
“Poor bastard nothing,” Parrish said indignantly. “He’s left Riley and Maggy homeless. Do you really think somebody murdered him?”
Ed frowned. “I think Wendell was maybe a victim of his own ambition. I’ve heard rumors … very vague rumors, starting months ago, that he’d gotten over his skis on this Belle Isle development project with the hotel and the new oceanfront lots. And all that.”
“You never said anything to me about any rumors.”
“Because as far as I knew, that’s all it was—rumors, gossip, innuendo.”
“I still wish you’d said something,” Parrish said. “Riley’s been totally blindsided by all of this. Maybe if she’d known he was in financial trouble…”
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Ed reminded her. “Right now, I think the best thing we can do for Riley, and Maggy, is be there for them.”
Parrish shivered and turned up the collar on her shirt.
“What’s wrong?”
“I was just thinking. Somebody murdered Wendell Griggs. Right here on this island. What if the killer is still hanging around? What if it doesn’t really have anything to do with the development deal? My God. What if it’s somebody we know?”
“Not likely,” Ed said calmly. “Whoever killed him—for whatever reason, that person is probably miles and miles away by now.”
She looked at him wistfully. “Do you really have to leave so soon? We had a pretty sucky start to the weekend. Doesn’t even feel like Memorial Day.”
“Can’t be helped. I need to go over the transcripts from the last deposition we did on the thing in D.C. before I fly out to Chicago first thing Wednesday.”
“Can’t one of your associates handle the Chicago thing?”
“No. The clients are paying for me, so they get me. You know that, Parrish.”
She nodded. “I know it, but that doesn’t mean I like it.”
Ed glanced at his watch. “It’s almost nine. You want to go get breakfast at the Sea Biscuit?”
Parrish slid her arm around his waist again. “Maybe later. I’ve got a better idea.”
“What’s that?”
She leaned in and whispered in his ear, letting her hand slide casually down, until it rested lightly on his butt.
His face lit up. “Really?”
“Absolutely.”
* * *
An hour later, Ed reluctantly rolled onto his side of the bed and yawned. He caught Parrish’s hand and kissed the palm of it.
“That was great.”
She leaned over and kissed his bare shoulder. “If I ask you something, will you tell me the truth?”
“If I know it.”
“Friday, when we were on the ferry, and Riley was telling me she planned to file for divorce, she said she’d wondered if Wendell was having an affair, even though he denied it. Have you heard anything like that? Did he have a girlfriend?”
“If there was another woman, do you really think Wendell would have told me? We weren’t best friends, you know. Not like you and Riley.”
“Men hear things. They gossip just as much as women,” Parrish insisted. “I just want to know what you’ve heard.”
Ed reached for the eyeglasses he’d left on the nightstand. “Okay. I did hear something. But you can’t tell Riley. It might not even be true.”
“Just tell me, for God’s sake,” Parrish said. “This is not a deposition. It’s just us, in bed. Pillow talk.”
“I played golf with a fellow down at Pinehurst, back in the fall. This guy was president of a family-owned bank in Wilmington. I mentioned that we have a place at Belle Isle, and he got this funny look on his face. Sort of a smirk, you’d probably call it. I asked him what was so humorous, and finally, he told me that he’d heard all the development going on at Belle Isle was being bankrolled by another small bank on the coast, and that the buzz in banking circles was that one of the bank’s junior execs, a gal in her early thirties, was literally in bed with the president of Belle Isle Enterprises.”
“That’s it? Did this guy name names?”
“No. There was nothing like that. Just a buzz, no more.”
“I wonder who the woman was?”
“Parrish!” His voice was sharp. “You promised not to say anything to Riley. Remember?”
“Spoilsport.”
Ed leaned over and gave his wife a long, lingering kiss. “Wendell Griggs was a fool. Didn’t his daddy ever tell him you don’t get your honey where you get your money?”