Sheriff McIntyre had done extensive digging. Some of the facts she reported I’d already unearthed for myself, and to my dismay nothing she added pointed a big foam finger at any one of our witnesses. Nobody had a criminal record, and aside from Miles’s divorce from Jade’s mother, there was nothing unexpected in the way of publicly recorded relationships. In keeping with their respective accounts, all the guests lived in Manhattan. Abella was newly unemployed, but her LinkedIn updates suggested she was actively looking for a job. If she was counting on Jasper for financial help, she was at least smart enough to have a backup plan.
The transfer of power at Sinclair Fabrics from Baldwin and Rachel to Bebe and Flynn also checked out, and it appeared Ned’s description of the business’s financial health was bang on. By poking around on Twitter, Mac discovered Sinclair Fabrics was soon to be the subject of a magazine feature. A freelance reporter had bombarded the company’s Twitter account with inflammatory questions about Attitude and the increasingly competitive textile industry. Domestic suppliers were mostly doing well, and a push on the part of the federal government to buy American meant products like the Sinclairs’ were in high demand. Even considering the competition there should have been enough business to go around, so the reporter wanted to know why the company wasn’t capitalizing on the opportunity. McIntyre got the sense the piece wouldn’t be favorable. The writer’s attempts to snag a quote from a Sinclair heir ended with the company ignoring her requests, but that didn’t mean a story wasn’t imminent. Just one more source of pressure for Bebe and Flynn.
Like Ned said, Camilla Sinclair sold her boat—a “gorgeous 46-foot 2005 Riviera 40 Flybridge,” whatever that was—the previous year for close to $600,000. McIntyre tracked Miles to a law office in Midtown, where he provided general counsel to companies without in-house lawyers. From what McInytre could tell, he’d never worked for Sinclair Fabrics.
As for Philip Norton, it was true he’d been with the family for close to twenty years. He had accounts with the local market, hardware store, and fishmonger on the Sinclairs’ behalf, and when he wasn’t on the island he rented an apartment in a small complex in Alexandria Bay. Everything our witnesses said about their everyday lives looked to be accurate. Unfortunately for me, the real value lay in what they were keeping back.
“Your turn,” McIntyre said when she was through.
“God, where do I start? Jasper’s sister is sleeping with his brother’s lover, and they think Jasper caught on to the affair yesterday afternoon. Jasper’s brother has a history of treating him like garbage and busted his lip last night. Jasper planned to propose to his girlfriend, but his sister’s husband’s daughter has a thing for him that’s not exactly aboveboard for a teenage girl. We’ve got a terminally ill grandmother sitting on a fortune, and a longtime caretaker about to be out of a job. But right now my money’s on the siblings. They’re trying to save the family business, and Jasper’s due for a big inheritance when his grandma dies. If he’s not around, it could go to them instead.”
“So just your average open-and-shut case.” She snorted. “What does Tim think?”
The question made me hesitate. In the parlor, Tim had looked utterly at ease. Had nothing we’d learned over the course of the day changed his mind about the magnitude of Jasper’s disappearing act? “The blood indicates assault, but last I checked, Tim thinks Jasper left the island on his own.”
“Okay, what am I missing?” I could hear the confusion in McIntyre’s voice. It sounded much like my own.
“Bebe says Jasper gets a kick out of messing with her and Flynn. I guess it’s possible he could have staged this, but everything about that feels wrong. Tim’s hoping we’ll find him in Canada, or back in the city.”
“Tim’s always been the optimistic type,” said Mac. I got the sense she didn’t think the personality trait was all that useful. “For what it’s worth, I talked to the manager at Jasper’s building. He checked the apartment for me. All clear, no indication of anything unseemly.”
I nodded to myself. Figured as much.
“I called the hospitals, around here and in Kingston, too,” she said. “Jasper hasn’t turned up and they’ve got no John Does that fit his description, dead or alive. If he did leave on his own, he couldn’t get back to Tern now if he wanted to.”
The storm, she explained, had gotten worse. The National Weather Service was predicting it would rage all night, with gale-force winds and more flooding. Waves were breaking records, and there were fallen trees and downed power lines all over the mainland. An apartment building had caught fire, and the flooding displaced a half-dozen families from their homes. Since I last spoke with Mac, A-Bay had gone from a town quietly shouldering a bit of rough October weather to a community in full-on panic mode. With the trooper boat out of commission, she’d been working on another way to get help to the island. There were available patrol boats a couple towns over, but McIntyre hesitated to dispatch them in such rough waters.
“So,” she said after a beat. “How do you feel?”
“I don’t know. A little peckish?”
“Shay.”
“What? It’s been a while since lunch.” McIntyre went silent, and eventually I sighed. The truth was, I didn’t feel great. There was still no infallible evidence of a murder on the island to validate my gut instinct. Every time I thought I had the case figured out, something happened to make me question my lead. I was sinking deeper and deeper into the family’s dark and convoluted lives, and I was running out of air.
How would I have handled this situation a year ago, before Bram and Carson and everything that came with them? I was definitely more suspicious now. Less self-assured. When I pressed him on it, Carson said Bram would make me stronger in the long run, both as a person and a cop, but he made sure to add that I wasn’t there yet. I couldn’t even use Tim as a barometer to measure how well I was doing my job, not now that Carson had me doubting him. I hated that Carson didn’t trust Tim, but I couldn’t ignore his warning. There was a reason why my fiancé said what he did.
I used to be a good judge of character. Separating the heroes from the villains was my specialty. It was all so simple back then—get the bad guys, avenge the good. As I listened to McIntyre try to convince me I could count on Tim’s help all over again, I thought about how Tim had behaved since arriving on Tern Island. Despite evidence to the contrary, he refused to believe Jasper was dead. I’d relayed every bit of what I’d gleaned from our witnesses. Tim ignored it and stuck to his sunshine-and-rainbows theory that all was well.
Tim knew the islands, and he knew the Sinclairs. At least, he knew of them. He seemed relaxed around the family. Like his guard was down. I thought it was an act, his way of getting on their good side, but what if there was more to it? Was it possible he’d met the Sinclairs before? Could it be Tim was concealing something? A relationship of some kind with our witnesses?