“If she’d gotten a good look at him, probably,” I said. “But my guess is he ran up behind her while fleeing and clocked her in order to get away.”
I stared out the window and frowned.
“What’s wrong?” Gertie asked.
“I was just thinking, what if Emmaline saw him and he clocked her, but before he could stab her like he did St. Ives, he heard Celia coming.”
“And he didn’t have time to finish the job,” Ida Belle said. “Those are two very different possibilities with two distinct outcomes for Emmaline now.”
I blew out a breath. “I know. But Carter will make sure she’s guarded in case it’s the worse of the two options.”
“Hopefully, Emmaline will wake up soon,” Gertie said. “Then she can tell us what she knows. Once it’s on record that she didn’t see the guy, there’s no point in coming after her again.”
I pulled up a blank document. “Okay, tell me what you know about St. Ives.”
“Not much,” Ida Belle said. “He was only here for a month the spring before you showed up in Sinful. He did a short-term rental, claiming he wanted to try out the area before buying.”
“If complaining about everything day and night was his idea of trying,” Gertie said, “then he tried really, really hard.”
Ida Belle nodded. “He didn’t make friends. Didn’t participate in local events. He did attend service every Sunday but didn’t show up for any church events. He shopped up the highway, claiming he didn’t want to pay markup at the General Store, so even Walter didn’t get a lowdown on him.”
“And he didn’t have a single person he had a drink with? Coffee? Sat on the front porch and complained to?”
They both shook their heads.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Gertie said.
“So what happened when he left?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Ida Belle said. “He was simply gone one day. He’d rented the house furnished, so it’s not like a moving van had to pull up and load. We assumed he just threw his personal items into his car, which was always parked inside the garage, and left. No one even knew he was gone until the For Sale sign went up in the front yard of the house he rented.”
“Well, the silence was kind of a tip-off,” Gertie said.
“True,” Ida Belle agreed.
“Who was the Realtor?” I asked. “Maybe we can get some insight from them.”
“Cara Holiday,” Gertie said.
I groaned. Cara Holiday was one of those people that you crossed the road to avoid when you saw her coming. She was too perky. Too happy. Too nosy. Too loud. Too talkative. Fortunately for me, she’d also had a thing for Carter for years, which meant she never tried to snare me into one of her useless exchanges. It also meant she wasn’t likely to tell me anything. As soon as Carter had zeroed in on me, Cara had as well, except her feelings were the opposite of Carter’s. When word got out about my CIA past, she’d stopped glaring and started pretending I wasn’t there. Since it worked for me, I’d never bothered to call her on it.
“I think it would be better if one of you talks to her,” I said.
“Maybe but maybe not,” Ida Belle said. “She’s kind of afraid of you. If she had an inkling you thought she knew something that would help catch Emmaline’s attacker and she was intentionally withholding it, she’d probably give up her dress size to get rid of you.”
“That was a long and convoluted sentence,” I said. “But it makes sense. Okay, so we have Cara on the list for questioning. Who else? Where was the house? Would the neighbors talk?”
They looked at each other.
“What?” I asked. “Did he live next to blind people?”
“No,” Ida Belle said. “On one side is Maisey Jackson.”
The name sounded familiar and finally I locked in on the reason. “The woman who boats naked?”
Ida Belle grimaced. “That’s the one.”
“Good God, I don’t want to question naked people,” I said. “I’ve seen more naked people since I moved to Sinful than I had in the rest of my life before, and I’m including myself in that count.”
Gertie nodded. “People do seem to have a problem maintaining a proper wardrobe in these parts.”
“The ‘parts’ are the problem,” Ida Belle said. “And for the record, you’re one of those people.”
“Everyone needs a hobby,” Gertie said.
“What about the house on the other side?” I asked.
They both frowned.
“Emmaline lives on the other side,” Ida Belle said.
“Crap,” I said.
Emmaline’s house was on an outside street of the neighborhood, which meant nothing was behind it but woods and marsh. There were houses across the street, but the likelihood of overhearing something from across the street was slim to none. Next door and behind were usually the two best options for getting some local dirt.
“You know who else we have to talk to, right?” Ida Belle asked.
“Who?” I asked.
“Celia,” Ida Belle said. “If you’re right on that couldn’t-finish-the-job theory, she might have seen the killer as well.”
“Great,” I said. “An obnoxious Realtor, a naked person, an idiot lecherous cop, an unconscious person, and Celia. This investigation is getting off to an awesome start.”
“The upside is, if someone murders Celia tonight, we’ll know she saw him,” Gertie said.
“How is that an upside?” Ida Belle asked.
“No more Celia?” Gertie suggested.
I sighed. “I don’t like the woman, but I don’t want her to die.”
“Walter said she was a no-show at the hospital,” Ida Belle said. “Leave it to Celia to knock herself out, then wake up and insist she didn’t need medical care.”
“She caught on fire and didn’t want medical care,” Gertie pointed out. “All in the same night, too. That has to be some kind of record. Even I haven’t managed that many brushes with death in a matter of hours.”
“Give it time,” Ida Belle said.
I slumped in my chair. “Jesus H. Christ, we’re going to have to go over to Celia’s house tonight, aren’t we?”
Gertie shook her head. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Chapter Five
A very disgruntled Dorothy opened the door to Celia’s house. I couldn’t really blame her. It was late, it had been a long day, and she was taking care of Celia. That was enough to sour anyone’s mood and since Dorothy’s standard personality was sourpuss to begin with, things were only going down from there.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?” she asked.
“Of course we know what time it is,” Gertie said. “Everyone over the age of three has a cell phone and they’re lit up bright at night, then there’s watches, dashboards on cars, and oh, those things called clocks that hang on walls.”
“Do you really think we’d be here if it wasn’t important?” I asked. “Here? Of all places.”