not as if I had much choice in the matter,” he said as though we’d never stopped talking from earlier in the day. “You’ve done good work, girl. But we need that diary if I am ever to lay down this blasted existence.”
“I have everyone I know working on it,” I told him with a new feeling of camaraderie. “We’ll find the diary.”
“Aye, I know ye will.”
I kept walking and he stayed beside me. There were so many questions I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want every one of them to be like a dagger to his heart—even though he was dead. “Will you ever see Mary again?”
He looked up at the stars. “I’m hoping so. We’ve been kept apart all these years. But I’m hoping, once I’m free, to be able to join her. My children too, for that matter. It’s been a long, lonely punishment for my crimes.”
“What about William Astor? Will you see him too?”
“I hope so, girl. I’d like to rip off some of his dead flesh and take the pieces—”
“I think that’s how you got here in the first place, Rafe. Maybe you should be forgiving too.”
“And who are ye to give me advice?” he demanded. “You haven’t even lived two score yet and you’re a
Traffic was light this late, and I considered my next question carefully before I asked. “Will I ever see my mother again? I’ve tried to contact her for the last few years. Maybe she doesn’t want to see me.”
“There, there.” His ghostly hand sort of patted my shoulder. “It’s probably nothing to do with you. Maybe yer ma’s not ready yet.”
“Could you ask her for me?”
“I could,” he agreed. “If I had any blasted idea of who she is.”
“She was a Bellamy on my grandmother’s side. Maybe you could look her up.”
He kind of snarled. “It’s not that easy. But I’ll try.”
I could’ve hugged him, but I knew there was nothing really there but hot air and attitude. We reached the turn in Duck Road right before my house. Two police cars and a county sheriff’s vehicle were parked in the street and in the drive.
“It looks to me like you’ve got company,” he said before he disappeared.
I blinked my eyes, amazed again at how fast he could be gone. I wished I could disappear too.
Chapter 38
I’ve always known that once a lawman, always a lawman. Even though Gramps was retired, he had almost as many late-night meetings with Tuck Riley and Chief Michaels as he’d had when he was working.
I grew up knowing my grandfather (who stood in as my father on many occasions) was different than other classmates’ fathers. Trudy’s father was an accountant. Tim’s father was a dentist. None of them seemed to worry about what was happening to the FBI or if there were more guns available on the island than there were twenty- five years ago.
He also used a secret code for things my mother didn’t want me to know about. Gramps would come home and talk about problems and situations that to my ears didn’t make any sense. I learned later that, on those occasions, he used code words to describe nabbing a bank robber or a drug smuggler. My mother worried that these were issues that were too adult for my eight- through twelve-year-old mind.
I remembered listening from the stairs to the lawmen gathered in the kitchen as they talked openly about getting shot, losing partners and dealing with other everyday life crises. Everything from murder to shoplifting was discussed during these sessions, which could last most of the night. Smuggling, from artwork to drugs and Cuban cigars, was always a popular topic. Being so remote, Duck had always been a target for smugglers.
At the time, I romanticized smuggling, thinking it was like being a pirate. My mother would catch me on the stairs and tell me I shouldn’t listen to that kind of talk. I should be thinking about new dresses and dolls, boys and parties. I always reminded her that
By the time I was a teenager, I knew more about law enforcement than most kids. But by then I’d lost interest, and boys and parties took priority. It was enough to know what was going on out there without hearing the boring details.
So tonight, I walked into the house knowing exactly what to expect—anticipating the hot air and tense moments as the lawmen discussed whatever this evening’s subject was. But I was surprised to find that they weren’t talking only about old times.
“Dae, will you put on another pot of coffee?” Gramps asked when he saw me, a frown furrowing his forehead beneath his old fishing hat. He looked like he’d just come in from fishing on the
I knew that meant it was going to be a long night. Sometimes they went through three or four pots.
Tim Mabry nodded to me but kept a low profile. Even more than Gramps’s expression, the fact that Tim didn’t flirt with me indicated a serious subject was being bounced around the kitchen table. Fresh donuts were present, but no one was eating—another bad sign.
Sheriff Riley was walking around the room, his hand resting on his gun as he spoke. “This affects all of us, Horace,” he said. “That’s why we’re here. Two and two don’t always make four.”
“In this case, I’d say they have no choice,” Chief Michaels said. “We had the gun and bullets tested twice. This is ballistics’ final report. There’s no doubt about it.”
I measured the coffee carefully, taking my time, wishing they’d get on with it. Usually I didn’t want to hear their discussions, but tonight was different. I could feel it in the clipped sound of their voices and tense body language. Something else bad had happened.
I was afraid they might decide not to continue until I left the room. I felt like a kid again, urging them silently to get to the point before my mother found me eavesdropping and ordered me to my room.
“The .22 pistol that killed Matthew Wright and Mayor Foxx is the same weapon that killed Wild Johnny Simpson over at the Blue Whale more than thirty years ago.” Sheriff Riley stopped pacing and glared at the chief and Gramps as if they were at fault.
“I thought we knew old Bunk Whitley killed Johnny?” Chief Michaels asked. “Maybe Bunk planted that gun to be found someday. Like now.”
“Any prints on the gun?” Gramps wondered in a hopeful tone.
“Wiped clean,” Scott Randall said as he smiled at me. I smiled back, and he looked away, his face stained red. Tim nudged him with his elbow as a warning not to flirt with me.
“I don’t believe old Bunk came back to kill this Wright fella and his girlfriend,” Sheriff Riley stated like he was saying it for the record. “I’d say old Bunk has bigger fish to fry.”
“But if not him, who?” Gramps demanded. “And how many times are we gonna ask this question about who killed Johnny Simpson?”
Wild Johnny Simpson was a mythical kind of figure in Duck—like Blackbeard or Rafe Masterson. He didn’t start out that way. He seemed to lead a normal kind of life, building a house and marrying Miss Elizabeth Butler.
Then something happened and he vanished, almost never to be seen again. If Kevin hadn’t reopened the Blue Whale, what happened to Johnny might still be a mystery.
Kevin had been showing some of us around when we found Johnny’s long-dead body in one of the top-floor rooms. He’d been shot and left to die—the Blue Whale closed up around him as old Bunk Whitley mysteriously vanished the same night. No one had ever known for sure what happened to either man.
Then I ran into Bunk Whitley on one of the supposed-to-be uninhabited coastal islands. Before he made another mysterious exit, he’d told me he’d left Johnny Simpson in charge of the Blue Whale and would never have hurt him. That left Johnny’s death still a mystery to some—while others, mostly the police, still accepted Bunk as Johnny’s killer.
