Page 54 of Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds

he didn’t answer.”

I reached out and touched him. “I’m sorry.”

“I feel helpless.” He started rubbing my arm, as if to both seek and give comfort. It endeared him to me in a way I couldn’t explain, even to myself. “He just started here this season, but he’s a hard worker. Born in Miami and saving money to go to college.”

“The worst thing he can do is hide from the police,” I said. “That makes him look guilty.”

“I’ll try to find him. Maybe I can talk sense into him,” Jason said. “Thanks for listening.”

He leaned in and kissed me, caressing my face in a romantic gesture. Now I knew what swooning felt like in all those historical

romance novels I’d devoured in college, because my knees wobbled, and I wanted to fall into his arms.

“Please be careful,” he said. “I still don’t know exactly what’s going on here, and I’m not ready to sign off that Gino’s

death was an accident.”

“You be careful too.”

“I’ll be by around ten, if that’s not too late.”

“Anytime,” I said, and hoped I didn’t sound desperate.

He kissed me again and said, “We should probably leave before I need to lock the door.” I blushed, and Jason laughed softly.

“I love how you’re so shy about these things.”

“What things?” I said, trying to force my body to behave.

He pushed me up against the door and pressed his body firmly against mine. I gasped, then said, “I wasn’t shy last night.”

“No, you weren’t,” he said, and kissed my neck. I closed my eyes and let all the feelings wash over me. Lust. Need. Excitement

that we were making out in the storeroom.

What if someone needed another keg?

Jason laughed into my neck. “You just realized anyone could find us making out in here, didn’t you?”

“Okay, I’m not as much into PDA as some.”

“That’s okay. I like it. I like you. Tonight.”

“Tonight.”

We left, and I realized I was in way over my head with Jason Mallory, but surprisingly I didn’t panic.

I didn’t know if that was good or bad.

Brie wasn’t back when I returned to our table. I finished my champagne, still a little overheated from the make-out session in the storeroom. I thought about poor Georgie and wished I hadn’t told Tristan about his confronting me. Tristan brought in Gino, and Gino then ended up dead.

I remembered the missing page. I couldn’t read most of it even after I rubbed a pencil over the impressions, but there were

a few letters that popped out.

I flipped through my notebook until I found what I’d written. A lot of blanks that I had marked with x ’s, but I now rewrote it without the missing letters.

77 emz $50 522 car

The 77 was definitely Gino Garmon. All the other coded numbers fit for Andrew, Sherry, Amber, Trevor, the others. The only

coded numbers I didn’t have names for were the list of five numbers that had also been on the missing page.

“Emz” was embezzlement, in shorthand. I couldn’t see all the letters, but it worked in context. And I thought “car” with the

missing letters was “cards”—he was stealing money, embezzling, because of a gambling addiction. Tristan knew he had a problem,

which was why he asked about his trips to St. Croix on the employee evaluation.

It made a lot more sense that he lost his job as a Miami cop because of gambling. He had debt, he was stealing, and Diana

knew all about it and was blackmailing him. 522—that was Ethan Valentine. She could have threatened to tell the resort owner

about his gambling problem, which may have prompted a full audit of the resort.

Motive and opportunity, I thought, proud of myself.

How did Diana know about Gino’s problems in the first place? Had she connected with him in the past? Or knew someone who was?

Where did Georgie Arendt come in? He’d admitted to taking the page from my book, and he called Jason and told him he did it for Gino. Maybe Georgie wasn’t the clean, honest kid Jason thought he was. Maybe he was in on something with Gino. Something that could have pushed him to kill his partner.

I wasn’t going to figure this out just staring at my notes. Instead, I focused on something more fun and less dangerous: finding

the documents Diana had hidden somewhere on the island.

I had been thinking about this ever since Brie and I had followed Parker and Amber to St. Claire Peak. They were using the

book to find out where Diana had hidden the documents she’d stolen from Parker, but they didn’t know how she’d coded the information.

The list of numbers in the margin had been torn out with the evidence about Gino’s gambling, but I had recreated them from

the impression they left on the page beneath. And I wondered if they weren’t names of guests and staff, but a different code—one

that led to treasure—namely, the file Diana had stolen from Parker.

11

19

157

52

210

They weren’t number codes for the people she was blackmailing, I realized as I stared.

They were page numbers.

I flipped through the images that Brie sent me, and on those pages, a single word had been circled. I wrote them down in order.

score

child

rice

king

jewel

I had no idea why she circled these words, but I was sure I was on the right track.

I read the paragraphs around these words, and they told a story specifically about the heroine’s search for the missing treasure.

I wish I had the book so I knew where the treasure had actually been found in the story.

I hit myself and went to my e-reader app on my phone—something I rarely used—and bought a copy of the book. It took several

minutes to download because the internet was slow, but when it finished, I immediately scrolled to the last two chapters and

read as fast as I could.

The characters had found the treasure on a boat, locked in a box. The bad guys had killed Gabrielle’s mentor who’d found the

treasure, but they couldn’t get it off the island, so hid it in a box on a public ferry.

There were several boxes on the St. Claire ferry, which would be safe, dry, and semiprivate to store documents that Diana

planned to retrieve in a day or two. She easily could have hidden them the morning she left for St. John.

But it was night. It was raining. No way I could access the boxes now. It would have to wait until morning.

Brie waved at me, and I went to her. “I think I know where the documents are,” I said.

“Good. I have Amber’s room number.”

“Don’t tell her, because I want to find them first. I mean, if it’s something illegal, we need to turn it over to the authorities.

But we can use it as leverage for information she has about Sherry.”

The lodge had four stories. We went up the stairs to the second floor. I glanced into the library and sighed.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

Brie nodded. “It’s nice. But staff is sleeping in there tonight. We’ll check it out tomorrow.”

Amber was at the far end of the wide hall. I knocked on the door. I heard a loud curse behind the thick door, and then it

flew open.

“Yeah? Oh. You.”

Amber didn’t look like her beautiful, put-together self. Her hair was dull, her eyes shadowed, and her face sallow.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Great!” she exclaimed sarcastically, throwing her hands in the air. She grabbed a wineglass and drained it, then poured another

glass, but the wine bottle was nearly empty. She drank it anyway, then slammed it down on the table.

Brie and I glanced at each other, then stepped inside and closed the door.

The lodge suites were oversized hotel rooms with a plush sitting area separating the sleeping area and a small alcove set

up as a den. A balcony would have a view of the ocean, but the shutters were closed because of the storm.

“I’m really sorry about Diana,” I said, wondering if she was grieving.

“Diana,” Amber said. She was on her way to being drunk, but I don’t think she was yet there. “Love her, hate her. I wish she

were here so I could tell her what an idiot she is!”

“Tell us what happened,” I said.

“You know!” Amber sat heavily on one of the love seats.

I sat across from her, and motioned for Brie to stay near the door. I didn’t know if Amber was dangerous or volatile, but

I didn’t want Brie to get caught up in anything.

“She came here with documents she took from Parker,” I said.

“Teach him a lesson, she said, for cheating on me.”

I was confused. “I thought you and Diana were involved.”

“We are. Were. Everyone betrayed me except Diana. She’s always been on my side, and I loved her for it. And she got herself killed!”

Tears welled in Amber’s eyes. She got up, walked to the mini-bar, and opened a fresh bottle of wine.

“So she stole something that Parker wants back, but hid it,” I said.

“At first I was all in, but then... Parker found out. Sunday he came to my house and said he was going after Diana.”

I must have gasped audibly, because Amber then said, “He didn’t kill her. He couldn’t even get here until Monday. He wouldn’t dare hurt her until he got his files back. Then he might have pushed

her off a cliff.”

“What’s in the files?” I asked.

“I don’t know! Diana looked, of course. She called me and said we had everything to take Parker down. Parker would have his

comeuppance, and we’d drink champagne and celebrate. We weren’t even supposed to come to St. Claire. We had a trip planned

to Europe , but she said someone here would be interested in the documents. I don’t even know what that means! But when Parker found out that Diana had come here , he blew his top.”

“So Parker knew who Diana wanted to give the files to,” I said, trying to keep up with Amber, but she was very confusing.

Maybe my assessment of her partial sobriety was off.

“Hell if I know! But yeah, sure. Probably. And give? No. Diana did nothing without getting something in return.”

“Do you have any idea why they’re important?”

“Something to do with Ethan Valentine, but I don’t even think he exists. No one has seen him for years .”

Valentine. Diana had gone to Ethan Valentine’s house the night she disappeared. Luis said he wasn’t home, but maybe she planned

on selling the documents to him.