“Will you be back later in the week?”
“It depends on how work’s going,” Scott said. “And I’m sorry about that. But you know I’ll be thinking of you and Maggy, right? Have you set the date?”
“Not yet. Billy will let you know as soon as I do.”
The ferry sounded the five-minute warning horn.
Riley felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Ed Godchaux standing beside her with a briefcase dangling from one hand.
“You’re leaving today?”
“Duty calls,” Ed said. He looked over at Scott. “You, too? We could have driven back to Raleigh together if I’d known that.”
“Except I’m driving over to Charlotte to catch a flight to Vegas tonight,” Scott said.
Ed turned back to Riley. He pointed toward the parking lot. “Parrish is right there. I think the two of you deserve a cocktail.”
“You don’t know how desperately I need one right now,” Riley said. “Will you be back next weekend?”
“Always,” Ed said.
“For sure,” Scott assured her.
After the men left to board the ferry, she joined Billy and Parrish in the parking lot, a few yards away from where Evelyn, Roo, and Maggy waited in the golf cart. The ferry tooted again, and the water around the big engine frothed as it slowly backed away from its berth with the weekenders ensconced on the upper deck.
Parrish used her hand as a makeshift sunshade and sighed audibly. “I hate Sunday nights. That ferry horn gets me every time.”
“I know what you mean,” Riley said. “When we were little, I’d get so sad, seeing Daddy packing up to leave on the Sunday night ferry. And then, after Wendell became a weekender like Daddy, I used to dread Sundays. Maggy would get herself all worked up and beg Wendell not to go. I mean, yeah, I missed him during the week, but mostly I dreaded the fact that I’d be a single mom for the next five days.”
“And I can remember those same Sunday nights when we were kids,” Billy chimed in. “But I guess I had a different reaction. I can remember thinking, ‘Okay, he’s gone. I can slouch and sleep late and not pretend to care about baseball or fishing or any of that he-man crap.’ It was a relief, really.”
Parrish gave him a sympathetic smile. “I think fathers are always harder on their sons.”
“Especially when their sons would really prefer to be whipping up a cake in their Easy-Bake Oven,” Billy said. “Now, though, yeah, Sunday nights are sad, because it means Scott’s leaving. Which is why I usually start the day with a Bloody Mary breakfast.”
“Bebo!” Maggy called from the golf cart. “Mom! Let’s go.”
“Coming.” Billy loped off in the direction of the golf cart.
Parrish linked an arm around Riley’s waist as they crossed the parking lot. “Was it awful?”
“It was … surreal,” Riley said, searching for the right words that could sum up the past few hours.
“How was Maggy?”
Riley rolled her eyes. “Upset, of course, when she saw Wendell. Then, after we left the hospital, she accused me of being glad he was dead.”
“No way.”
“She’s so angry it’s scary. And most of it’s directed at me. I don’t know what to say to her, Parrish. I can’t lie about the state of our marriage. And I can’t tell her the truth about what was going on with Wendell, because I don’t know the truth. Get this—she made me promise to find out who killed him.”
“What did you say?”
“What could I say? I told her I’d try.”
Parrish nodded, then reached into the pocket of her shorts and brought out a folded sheet of paper, which she pressed into her friend’s hand.
“Here. Ed flaked out on me on the lawyer front, so I made some phone calls myself.”
The paper was one of Parrish’s pale, seafoam-green, heavy, linen, monogrammed notecards. Two lines. A name and a phone number.
“Sharon Douglas?”
“I don’t know her personally, but from what I hear, she’s a ball-buster. She’s younger than us, only thirty-two, but she clerked for a federal appeals court judge after she finished law school, then worked as an assistant D.A. in Atlanta. She worked briefly for the feds, and only hung out her shingle in Wilmington as a solo practitioner last year.”
Riley studied the name. “Did she go to law school at Duke or Carolina?”
“Neither. University of Georgia. And don’t be such a snob. I Googled her. She’s the real deal. Editor of her law school review, finished first in her class. Divorced, no kids.”
“Okay. Thanks. I’ll call her Tuesday.”
Parrish shook her head. “Sweetie? Call her tonight. I kinda went rogue on you and actually reached out to her myself after you and I talked this morning. She’s expecting to hear from you.”
Riley gulped. “Oh, God. You think things are really, really bad, don’t you?”
Parrish studied her old friend’s face. She hated keeping secrets, but on the other hand, she’d given Ed her word. “In times like these I think it’s a good policy to hope for the best but expect the worst.”
* * *
“Everything all right?” Evelyn asked as Riley climbed into the seat beside Billy. “Do we have a date for Wendell’s service?”
“I don’t know,” Riley said in a voice that was louder than was strictly necessary. “People keep asking me that, but I just don’t know. I don’t know when the coroner will release Wendell’s body. I don’t know when we can have his service. I don’t even know if we will have one.”
Evelyn’s eyebrows shot up in alarm. “Of course we’ll have a memorial. A nice traditional service at the Chapel in the Pines. I have Father Templeton on notice. He can come down from Edenton any day this week. And the ladies’ auxiliary have already started baking. We’ll have people back at Shutters afterward. Wendell would want that.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Riley said. “Were you even going to consult me on any of this?”
“It’s the right thing to do,” Evelyn said, settling the matter. “Think about how it would look if we didn’t have a service. I wasn’t going to mention this, but rumors are already swirling around the island. If we don’t have a funeral, people will wonder if we have something to hide.”
“I can’t talk about this right now,” Riley said, knowing that she was only delaying the inevitable.
* * *
They were barely out of the ferry parking lot when Ollie, always on alert for trouble, gave a short bark, and without warning, hopped off Evelyn’s lap and went trotting into a thicket of palmettos.
Evelyn stomped on the brake. “Ollie,” she cried.
“Oh, let him go. Maybe a gator will get him,” Roo said.
“Aunt Roo!” Maggy exclaimed. “That’s mean.”
“I’ll go get him,” Billy said, jumping down to go after the errant pug. “Ollie. Here, Ollie!”
Maggy hugged Banks tightly to her chest.
“Daddy’s hair was wrong,” she announced, in a very small voice. She swiveled around in her seat, turning accusing eyes on her mother. “Why didn’t you fix his hair?”