She sighed once more and made to turn back into the house, when a slight movement caught her eye. Peering into the dusk, a form appeared—Mrs. Olecki standing on her back porch with a broom, looking up at Piper with one eyebrow cocked. And Piper wondered exactly how much she had overheard.
Chapter 18
On Saturday, Piper paced back and forth, traversing the length of her den in eight short steps, and then turning on her heel to cover the exact same area. Someone had set Tom’s boat on fire last weekend. Well, not someone. She knew exactly who had done it. And though she had tried to ignore it all week and let it roll off her back, she had woken up that morning with a new rush of anger.
Logically, of course, she knew the boat had been beyond repair. And she had other things to worry about—like how her choices were starting to catch up with her. “Hope you’re feeling better,” Mrs. Olecki had said two nights ago over her shoulder while hanging laundry, as Piper tried to sneak past her up the stairs to her carriage house. She had lied to Mr. Garrison to get out of work, and should have known word would get around. It always did. “Uh, yeah. I am,” she had replied dumbly, unable to offer an explanation of where she had been.
She knew she needed to just keep her head down. Not rock the boat. But that was easier said than done—especially when people were going around destroying property that didn’t belong to them.
And she couldn’t pretend for another second that it didn’t bother her. Piper knew she had a reputation in town for being perpetually happy, kind, unruffled. And if she was telling the truth, she rather liked the way people saw her. But more recently she was finding—disconcertingly so—that when she was sad or downright filled with rage (like right now), she was having more and more trouble holding it in. She was tired of pretending. And with that, she left her house, letting the screen door slam shut behind her, and stormed toward the docks.
—
“I’ll just put these bags right here.” Anders stood in the room adjacent to his own on the second floor of the bed-and-breakfast on Saturday afternoon, trying not to stare at the hat crowning the guest’s gray curls, looking more like a dead peacock than a fashionable fascinator. “If you need anything, Mrs. Olecki will be happy to help. Oh, and there’s fresh lemonade and chocolate chip cookies downstairs if you’re hungry.”
“Thank you, dear.” The woman smiled, her yellowed dentures poking through her thin lips. “I think I’ll take a short rest first.”
Anders nodded, and with one last glance at the hat, he ambled down the stairs to help himself to one of the cookies Mrs. Olecki had just taken out of the oven. He’d only been on the island for an hour, but he couldn’t shake the jittery feeling he’d had since stepping foot off the ferry and onto the dock. Was he sharing the same tiny strip of land with a cold-blooded killer? It didn’t seem possible. For one thing, Jess was right, the police report had seemed pretty cut-and-dry—but still, something didn’t add up. Who had set the boat on fire? And why? And what about the rumors in town that Tom’s death wasn’t an accident? Anders knew he had to be missing something, but he’d rolled the pieces around in his head all week and just couldn’t seem to make anything fit.
“There you are.” Pearl Olecki’s voice cut into Anders’s thoughts. “Only take two—the rest are for the guests.”
Anders wiped crumbs off his chin with the back of his hand and started to remind her he was a guest, but realized he hadn’t really felt like one in weeks.
“When you’re done, can you help Harold move our china cabinet to the back shed? He’s going to sand and restain it. This salt air wreaks havoc on the wood.”
“Sure.”
She nodded once and then opened the refrigerator and stuck the top half of her body in it. Anders heard the clanking of her moving jars around.
“Hey, can I ask you something?”
Pearl made a noise that sounded like assent.
“Do you ever worry about crime out here?”
While her chest remained perpendicular to the floor, Pearl peeked her head out just enough to look at Anders with eyebrows raised. “Crime?” She let out a hoot. “Heavens no.” Back in the fridge she tutted, mostly to herself. “Crime. As if we’ve got drug dealers and street fighters running amok out here. Crime. Ha!”
Anders paused at her mention of drugs, remembering Mr. Gimby’s senile ranting about a drug ring.
“So there’s never been a crime out here? Not even once?” Anders found that hard to believe. Especially when the island had been home to more than five hundred people back in its heyday. There was no way five hundred people could be upstanding citizens at all times. It was Frick Island—not Pleasantville.
“Well, there was that one time,” Pearl said, straightening up and shutting the refrigerator door with her hip, a bunch of celery and a head of lettuce clutched in either paw. “Lady Judy got her wallet stolen.”
“Really? What happened?”
“She stomped all over this island, in a full-on fit, screeching to anyone who’d listen that whoever had taken her belongings had best be putting it back in its rightful place.” The side of her mouth curled up. “And so Preacher Norm showed up on her front porch that evening, wallet in hand.”
“A preacher had stolen it?”
“No. She’d left it in his house, when she’d stopped by to drop off her
