It was a simple, nondescript, white wood-framed building, circa 1940s. Her great grandfather hadn’t believed in showy, and her own father, W.R., hadn’t seen any need to upgrade the company headquarters. Wendell had commissioned a design from the same architect who’d designed the Sand Dollar Lane house for an impressive two-story building that he felt would be more appropriate for the company headquarters, and had made plans to tear down the old building four years ago, but the shaky economy had put that scheme on hold.
Back here, there were none of the quaint, vaguely period streetlamps or fanciful façades that composed the rest of the shops in the village. Instead, an industrial-strength halogen lamp was mounted on the roof, sending a pool of harsh light onto the pavement below.
Riley sat in the cart and tried to think of a plan to gain entry into Wendell’s office. To her own chagrin, she realized he’d never given her a set of keys to the office. She’d searched Shutters for an extra set of keys, to no avail, and no key chain had turned up in the effects the hospital had given her along with Wendell’s billfold and wristwatch.
She thrust her hands into the pockets of her mother’s borrowed jacket. The fingers of her right hand closed on something metal.
When she withdrew her hand from the pockets she saw that she was holding a key ring. There was no fob, just three plastic bar-coded cards—she had to hold them up and squint to read the fine print: Harris Teeter, the Baldwin County Public Library, and Ace Hardware. There were three keys as well, all bearing faded labels in Evelyn’s distinctive flowery handwriting. Shutters. Golf locker. Office.
Riley grinned. Bless Evelyn Nolan’s orderly, obsessive-compulsive soul.
She pulled out her cell phone and sent a text to Parrish.
Meet me at the office?
* * *
She fit the office key into the lock of the heavy steel door, but the tumblers didn’t turn. Now she grasped the ugly handle hard with her left hand and with her right, jiggled the key, left, then right, then left again, until finally, the key turned in the lock.
She paused for a moment. At one time, Wendell had talked about having the same kind of security system he’d used at Sand Dollar Lane installed here at the office. Riley couldn’t remember if he’d actually followed through on that plan.
Holding her breath, she opened the door and stepped inside, waiting for the shriek of an alarm or flashing lights. But all was quiet.
* * *
She walked quickly to the front window that looked out on the village green and closed the old-fashioned venetian blinds, then drew the curtains too, before snapping on the light in the office.
The outer office wasn’t a large room, maybe ten by fourteen feet. The walls were painted planks, and the floor was linoleum, although Wendell had installed a thick Berber carpet in an effort to class the place up. Various postcard-worthy color photos of Belle Isle dotted the walls: a scenic shot of the Big Belle lighthouse, views of the harbor, the beach, and some village shops, along with slightly fuzzy old black-and-white enlargements depicting the early days of the island. Her favorite of all the photos was one of her great-grandfather James and his brother, her great-uncle Charles, posing with shovels planted in the sandy soil in front of a large RILEY BROTHERS REALTY sign. Her grandfather’s massive oak desk stood near the center of the room, used now as a receptionist’s desk, although Wendell had actually fired his receptionist more than a year earlier, claiming she was incompetent.
In the interest of being thorough, Riley opened and closed the desk drawers, finding nothing besides forgotten pencils, pens, paper clips, and rubber bands. There was a filing drawer, but the only thing it held was a pair of worn flip-flops and a stained coffee mug.
She went into the inner office, and in the half-light from the outer office found the desk and turned on the lamp. Wendell’s desk was as tidy as Wendell himself. Large, sleek, contemporary, and made of some rare African wood she couldn’t pronounce.
Riley sat down in the ergonomic chair. The desktop was bare, except for a phone and a sterling picture frame that held a studio portrait of Maggy that she’d had taken for Wendell’s Father’s Day gift two years earlier. The picture showed Maggy in profile, in a pensive pose, her hands resting lightly in her lap, her face tilted up toward the light. Riley’s face softened as she touched the photo. Her girl had changed so much in two short years. Hadn’t they all?
She was about to open the top desk drawer when she heard the back door creaking open.
Now there were footsteps, light ones, in the hallway, coming her way.
“Riles? Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Parrish was dressed in black: black yoga pants, black tank top, black-and-pink running shoes. “How’d you get in here?”
“Through pure, dumb luck, I found Mama’s jacket in the back of her golf cart, put it on, and in her jacket pocket magically found her key ring with a key to the office,” Riley said.
“Luck of the Irish,” Parrish said, looking around the room.
She cleared her throat. “As your attorney, and as an officer of the court, I feel obliged to tell you that what you’re doing right now could be considered obstruction of justice. Or maybe tampering with evidence. I warned you I know squat about criminal law, right? But that much I vaguely remember.”
“Okay,” Riley said. She pointed at the three-drawer file cabinet against one wall. “I’ve been warned. Now get busy going through those files while I ransack Wendell’s desk.”
* * *
“Any idea of what we’re looking for?” Parrish pulled out the first file in the first drawer, which was labeled ARCHITECT’S RENDERINGS. It was thick, with lots of folded blueprints.
“Not really,” Riley admitted. “I guess it would be too obvious for Wendell to have a file labeled ‘Shenanigans,’ huh?”
“Or ‘Foreclosure.’ I’ll look though, just in case,” Parrish said.
Riley slowly opened the shallow top desk drawer. It contained all the things you’d expect to find: small stainless mesh baskets, with the contents neatly sorted. Paper clips in one, rubber bands in another, postage stamps, three different sizes of Post-it Notes. There was a stapler and a tape dispenser. She was about to close the drawer when something caught her eye.
She picked up the container of paper clips and stirred it around with her forefinger, then picked up the object.
Riley slipped the white-gold band onto her thumb. “Oh, God.” She choked back a sob.
“What?” Parrish dropped the file she was holding and rushed over to the desk. “What is it?”
“Wendell’s wedding ring,” Riley whispered, holding up her hand.
“Oh, Riles,” Parrish said with a sigh.
“It was tossed in with a bunch of paper clips. I almost missed it, but then I realized one of these things is not like the other.”
“Did you know he’d stopped wearing it?”
“No. The last few times I saw him, he was in and out of the house in a hurry, or we were bickering. I guess I never even noticed. How’s that for some kind of subliminal message?”
“What do you think it means?”
“Well, he’s known the marriage was over for a while now. Maybe he took it off after our last unpleasant encounter. Or maybe he quit wearing it months ago. Maybe his girlfriend objected to it.”