“Unless she comes down the Marginal Way,” Fiona said. The Marginal Way was a footpath that went along the ocean’s edge. The scenic route followed the cliffs from Perkins Cove where their house was to the center of Noquitt and was very popular with tourists. Belladonna could easily follow it to
Sticks and Stones
which was about midway on the path without ever seeing a car.
“Maybe. I hope so.” Morgan opened the window wider, and stuck her head out. “Belladonna!
Bella!”
“Meoooow.”
“Oh, I guess that is her,” Fiona said opening the door. The cat shot inside, then looked at the sisters innocently.
“Mew.” She used a quiet, kitten like voice that would melt even the coldest heart. Fiona figured it was on purpose so as to avoid getting yelled at. She narrowed her eyes at the cat who proceeded to purr up at her and rub her head against her ankles.
The girls looked at each other shaking their heads.
“Well, at least she’s safe in here now.” Fiona watched Belladonna curl up in a sunny spot, marveling at how the cat could drop off to sleep in a second.
“Can I have my latte now?” She held out the teacup for a trade.
Morgan laughed and handed over the latte which Fiona took over to the microwave.
“Don’t forget tomorrow we are going to check out the scene of the crime. So it would be great if you and Jake weren’t at each other’s throats.” Morgan’s blue eyes studied Fiona over the rim of her tea cup.
Fiona felt her heart clench. Morgan was right. She had to trust Jake to help them. It might be Morgan’s only chance. “I know, I just don’t understand why you trust him so much.”
“Why
don’t
you trust him?”
“I don’t know. Why would he help us?
We’re strangers to him.”
“Maybe he just wants to do the right thing. He said he doesn’t trust Overton and doesn’t think the investigation is being run properly.”
“Or maybe Overton has him helping us as a plant. To find out what we know or get some evidence to incriminate you.”
Morgan bit her lower lip. “I don’t think so, I have a gut feeling about Jake Cooper and my gut feelings are usually right.”
Morgan stared at Fiona so long that Fiona started to squirm. “What?”
“I was wondering if maybe your resistance to Jake is something else. How long has it been since you broke up with Kevin?”
Fiona felt her heart jerk at the mention of her ex-fiance. She’d been engaged to Kevin O’Laughlin for four years … until she found him cheating on her two years ago. It had been heart breaking and she’d vowed never to let anyone hurt her like that again.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” She crossed her arms across her chest.
“Maybe nothing. But I’ve seen the way Jake looks at you and I was wondering if maybe the resistance you feel is actually an attraction.”
“What?” Fiona felt her face grow warm.
Could Morgan be right?
Her sister had an uncanny way of digging to the root of people’s feelings.
Morgan just shrugged and starting grinding some herbs with her pestle.
Fiona felt flustered. She went over to her workbench and fiddled with her jewelers tools. “It’s not.”
“Huh?” Morgan looked up at her.
“An attraction. I mean, I barely know the guy,” Fiona answered.
“Of course,” Morgan said. “Just as long as you guys get along I don’t really care what it is. I saw Overton at the cafe and he made some remark about how I should still be in jail. I really hope Jake can help us find something to put us on the track of the real killer and get Overton off my back.”
Fiona stared down at the necklace she was working on without really seeing it. Her mind was too busy thinking about Overton and why he was so hot to frame Morgan. Maybe if they could figure that out, it would lead them in the direction of the real killer.
She raked her fingers through her red curls and made a vow to give Jake Cooper a chance—for Morgan’s sake and nothing else.
What Morgan had said earlier about her resistance really being attraction was ridiculous. And even if it was true, she had no intention of following through with it … no matter how deep his gray eyes were or how good he smelled.
The next morning started out unusually hot for mid spring. Fiona dressed in khaki Capri’s, a black tank top and black and white polka-dot Keds for their trip to the woods. Pulling her red curls into a pony tail that sat high on her head and hung halfway down her back, she trotted down to the kitchen to meet Morgan.
Her older sister was already in the kitchen, holding a tea bag in her hand as she watched the microwave heat a cup of water. Her jet black hair hung from a similar pony tail. She had on a similar pair of Keds in navy blue to top off her outfit of denim capris and white tank top.
Fiona looked down at her outfit, then at Morgan. “I guess this is standard crime scene visiting garb.”
Morgan laughed. “I guess so. It seems like it’s going to be hot today so I didn’t want to get overheated.”
Fiona nodded. “Are you ready?”
“Yep. Let’s take my car.” Morgan grabbed her cup.
“Okay, but I need to stop at the cafe and get a latte.”
Five minutes later, Morgan pulled her Toyota up to the pre-arraigned meeting spot at the end of East Frazier Pasture Road. Jake was already there leaning casually against a beat up gold and black Suburban. Fiona tried not to notice that his tee-shirt was just a bit tight against his muscular chest. She gulped down her latte and got out of the car.
“You guys ready?” He pushed himself off the car starting toward them.
“Ready as we’ll ever be.” Morgan said.
The three fell in line walking the short distance to an opening in the woods.
“It’s through here.” Jake gestured to a barely visible path.
As they walked further into the woods, the trees became more dense and Fiona felt the temperature drop a few degrees. They had walked about a quarter mile when they came to an area still marked with yellow crime scene tape. Inside the tape, a large area of leaves and pine needles were disturbed where an obvious struggle had gone on.
Fiona looked around to get her bearings. They were in the deepest part of the woods with no houses visible.
“So Prudence’s house is in that direction.” She pointed to the North.
Jake nodded. “And the cafe is in that direction,” he said pointing West.
Morgan turned in a circle inside the taped off area. “Where did the killer come from?”
Jake shrugged.
“Well,
Sticks and Stones
must be over there,” Morgan said pointing to the South. “But that morning I was coming from the cafe, so if I killed her, I would have had to walk up the same path Prudence did, strangle her, then run off that way.”
“You wouldn’t have had enough time to do that.” Jake said, “I mean, if the time you say you got to
Sticks and Stones
is right.”
Fiona glared at Jake. “Of course, it is. We know the exact time she got there. Plus my latte was warm.”
Jake held up his hands. “I know, Red, just saying what a prosecuting lawyer might say.”
Fiona pursed her lips together.
Did he just call her Red, again?
But instead of getting angry, she just smiled. He was right, of course. They had to consider what a prosecutor might use against them.
“I don’t know how any of that will help us now.” Morgan pushed some of the leaves aside with her foot. “We need to be looking for clues the police might have missed.”
“Speaking of which, I took the box of Prudence’s effects to Ed yesterday and a couple of things were missing. We don’t have them down at the station, so we should be on the lookout for them here. If they aren’t here, then the killer likely has them.”
“What are they?” Fiona looked up at Jake who had his head down, scanning the ground.
“A gold necklace with the letter ‘P’, and a scarf with sunflowers on it.”
Fiona’s heart clenched. She looked over at Morgan.
Should they tell him about the scarf?
Morgan widened her eyes and nodded her head toward Jake. Fiona knew exactly what she meant. They
had
to tell him.
Fiona cleared her throat and Jake narrowed his eyes at her.
“What?”
“We know where one of those is.”
He raised his eyebrows looking from Morgan to Fiona.
“The scarf … it really was buried in the garden.”
“So the tip was real?”
“I guess so. It just so happened I found it earlier that day, so when you guys came to dig up the garden I had already removed it.”
Jake sighed. “So you tampered with evidence.”
Fiona bit her bottom lip. “Well, technically. But I didn’t know it was evidence when I dug it up … sort of.”
“Sort of?” Jake looked at her incredulously.
“What she means is that she knew it was Prudence’s scarf, but didn’t realize that was what she had been strangled with.”
Jake ran his hands through his short cropped hair. “Do you know how it got there?”
“No idea.”
“I’m going to need to see it. There could be evidence on there.”
“Okay.” Fiona felt her stomach sinking. She hoped she hadn’t done anything to harm Morgan’s case.
“The only problem is that now we can’t really turn it in to the police.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have told you,” Fiona said. “We don’t want you to get into trouble.”
“Now that you do know about it … if you don’t tell the police that could look bad for you,” Morgan added, her blue eyes full of concern.
Jake just shrugged. “Well, what I’m doing now doesn’t look so good, so I guess it really doesn’t matter. Besides, I’m on the side of finding out the truth … I’m not sure what side Overton is on.”
“We don’t have the other item.” Morgan added in a small voice.
“Is there anything else you guys need to tell me?”
Both girls shook their heads.
“Well, just one tiny thing.” Fiona winced at Jake’s look of exasperation.
“What?”
“We talked to Ed’s brother, Josiah, yesterday and he said Ed was planning on buying a boat,” Fiona said. “I wonder if he had a big insurance policy on Prudence?”
“Ed didn’t mention that to me yesterday, but it didn’t really come up in the conversation either. He claims he was at Cutty Marina when she was killed, so he has an alibi I can check.”
“Josiah claims to have an alibi too. Says he was out lobstering and his deck hand can verify it.”
“Okay, I’ll check into that,” Jake said. “Let’s just get on with searching this area.”
They put their heads down and started looking. Fiona pushed the leaves around with her feet disturbing a few little orange fire newts that were hanging around underneath.
“There’s lots of newts here. Do you guys think one could have just crawled into Prudence’s mouth on its own?”
“That would be quite a coincidence, wouldn’t it?” Jake asked.
“Yes,” Morgan answered. Then she laughed. “That would also be really bad luck, because if it wasn’t for the newt, I don’t think I would have been implicated.”
Fiona wrinkled her brow. “That would really be a bummer, if it was just a coincidence."
They passed the next half hour in silence, each of them busy with their heads bent toward the ground, sweeping the area with their feet. Fiona concentrated on trying to avoid stepping on newts while she focused on looking for anything out of the ordinary.
“Meow.” Fiona whirled toward the direction of the sound. She felt her stomach lurch when she saw Belladonna standing about ten feet away, out of the crime scene taped area.
This was getting kind of creepy. The cat was showing up everywhere.
“Belladonna!” Morgan rushed over to the cat who looked up at her adoringly, then head butted her shin while Morgan bent down to pet her.
“Is that your cat?” Jake asked.
“Yep. She seems to like to wander around outside, even though we try to keep her in the house.” Fiona joined Jake in walking over to where Morgan and Belladonna where.
The three of them stood laughing at the cat as she played in the leaves. First she batted some leaves with her paw, and as they were swirling around, she pounced on them, sliding this way and that.
She leaped in the air, pouncing on a pile of leaves, then batted something at the bottom which slid out of the pile. Fiona saw a reflection of sunlight glint off the object.
“Hey wait a minute.” She bent down and grabbed it before Belladonna could bat at it again. Straightening up, she stared at the nickel sized object. Shaped like a crescent moon with a tiny black jewel on each end, it was some sort of silver colored metal.
“What’s that?” Morgan wrinkled her brow holding out her hand.