“I’ll walk you home,” Ryan said. The spot Coltrane was focused on was just back and to the left of Ryan’s driveway, which put it in the woods directly next to my house.
I shrugged him off. “No, you’ll freeze to death. I’m fine.”
“I’m gonna grab a coat, stay here,” Ryan ordered, already turning to run back up the brick path to his front door. “Don’t leave.”
I debated taking off before he got back, but I had to admit I was a little spooked. Coltrane wasn’t jumpy or prone to overreacting to strangers or stray cats or whatever. If he growled at something, it meant he was warning me. Or warning whoever was out there. I looked around again. Mr. Littrell had gone inside, and the Prius had driven on. Coltrane and I were very much alone on that street, at least as far as I could tell.
A few seconds later, Ryan came back with a puffy down coat, a wool hat, and a flashlight. But he was still wearing shorts and flip-flops. (Clueless idiot.) “Let’s go.”
We walked quickly along the sidewalk of Beach Street. Coltrane seemed more relaxed now that we’d left Ryan’s street, though he was not the same jaunty monarch he’d been earlier. Maybe it was my imagination, but he seemed a bit more on guard.
I asked Ryan about Lizzie and what fun new things she was doing these days (grabbing her feet, blowing spit bubbles, giggling) and how his parents felt about him taking time away from working at their Farm & Home store to get Mysa up and running. Ryan said his parents were over the moon about it all. They’d all agreed that once the café got established, Ridley could run it and he’d go back to work for the family business. They’d volunteered to help with any and all babysitting needs. Sounded like they were just as smitten with Lizzie as the rest of us.
“And how are things with Ridley?” I wasn’t sure if it was weirder to ask or not to ask at this point. A few weeks ago, Ryan had come to me seeking advice on how to best declare his newfound love to Ridley. When I’d tried to tell him that maybe he ought to ask someone else for advice, he’d wrongly assumed it was because I was jealous that he had someone since I was still single. I’d tried telling him he was wrong, that I’d long since let go of any romantic feelings for him, and I was perfectly happy being on my own. To that, he’d basically ruffled my hair and said something along the lines of, “Sure you are, kid.” It made me want to dunk him in a vat of boiling oil. After a while though, I’d forgiven him as usual. He didn’t mean to be so self-centered; he just couldn’t help it.
“Things are good.” Ryan smiled into the darkness. “We’re taking things slow, but we’re in a really good place right now.”
“I’m glad,” I said, ninety-seven percent because I meant it, and three percent to prove I wasn’t carrying a torch.
When we got to my driveway, I unleashed Coltrane and gave him the “Go see” command, which meant that he took off to sniff the perimeter of the house. It was a neat trick he’d learned in the doggy police academy before he was retired for being gun-shy. Ryan trailed behind him with his flashlight. I waited on the front porch, scanning the street and trying not to look freaked out.
After about three minutes Ryan came back, Coltrane trailing behind him. “All clear. Must have just been a raccoon or something.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right,” I said, not at all sure. “Well, thanks for walking me home. Say hi to Ridley and kiss Lizzie for me.”
“You got it—though I might switch those around.”
I rolled my eyes. “Bye, Ryan.”
“’Night, Riles,” he said. “Night, buddy,” he called to Coltrane.
I went inside, slid the deadbolt into place, and threw a little prayer into the universe that whatever “raccoon” had been skulking around my house earlier didn’t own a set of lock picks.
CHAPTER 6
I spent the rest of the evening going over Flick’s file. Again. I’d been through it ten times already over the past month, but now I attacked it with renewed purpose. I needed to find evidence that Flick’s and Granddad’s deaths were connected in order to persuade Lindsey to deal with Tackett. I knew in my gut that the two crimes were related—possibly even committed by the same person—I just had to find a way to prove it.
The problem was that Flick had told me very little about what he was working on. It was his way of keeping a promise he’d made to Albert to “keep me safe.” I still didn’t know if Granddad had asked Flick to do that as a general measure, or if he said it because he was worried about a particular threat to my safety. Either way, Flick’s interpretation of keeping me safe had led us down a rocky path. Right after Granddad’s death was ruled a suicide, I’d begged Flick to help me investigate it, to help me prove it had been a crime, but he refused to even talk to me about it. He shut me down and shut me out completely. At the time, I assumed it was because he was selfish or lazy or a coward. I had no idea he was just trying to keep the last promise he’d made to his best friend. And until very recently, I’d had no idea that Flick shared my suspicions about how Granddad died.
I started, as I often did when I was feeling stuck, by making a list. I carefully selected a brand-new journal from my growing collection (and possible indication of hoarding tendencies). This one was gray, eight and a half by eleven, leather-bound, and had my initials stamped into the bottom right corner. It had been a birthday present from Flick. I opened it to the first page and wrote the words WHAT I KNOW across the top.
1. Flick went to Chincoteague Island to follow a lead about Granddad’s murder.
Just days before he was killed, Flick told me he was going to Chincoteague to look into something. I didn’t even know he’d left the island until I received the phone call from Kay saying his car had been found on Highway 58. That was more than 200 miles from Chincoteague. Among the many things I needed to figure out were: What exactly was Flick doing on the island? Why did he leave? And where was he going when he was run off the road?
2. Shannon Miller / plane crash.
The last conversation I had with Flick was on the day before he died. I remembered the call so clearly. I could still hear his gruff voice across the line, the cutouts from bad reception, the background noise that made it sound like he was in a war zone, rather than a vacation destination off the coast of Virginia. I’d asked him to tell me what he’d found out, what lead he was chasing. He was characteristically vague and said only that he was following up on something Albert had been working on right before he was murdered.
“…an entire family was tragically killed in a plane crash outside their home state of—” the line cut out and I didn’t hear that part. “The youngest daughter was only four years old at the time. Her name was Shannon Miller…I came over here to Chincoteague because this is where their plane went down—”
When I told Flick that I was worried about him and maybe he should just come back, he’d laughed and said, “Don’t worry about me, kid. I’ve confronted worse than a pack of professional liars…I’ll call you back later tonight, okay?”
But he didn’t call me back. Instead, he’d left the island and had driven west. I would never hear his voice again. A wave of sadness swept through me thinking about that night. If only he would have told me what he was working on, whom he was meeting, where he was going. I don’t know that I could have saved his life, but it sure would have made it easier for me to find who killed him and hold them responsible.