Page 86 of Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds

Mrs. Kent sighed. “Yes, thank you. I freaked.”

“Justified,” I said as I glanced down the path to my door. “I need to go, but maybe I’ll see you on the cruise tonight?”

“We’ll be there,” she said and waved as I walked to my door.

I sat down at the desk and booted up my laptop. I’d been planning to research Ethan Valentine and dig deeper into Sherry Morrison, but I hesitated as I thought about the implications of Diana Harden having my suite before me.

Anyonecouldhave seen me reading Diana’s book on the beach—like Sherry Morrison—but that didn’t mean everyone had seen me reading it, or knew what it was if they had. If the culprit knew Diana had written in the book and couldn’t find the book in her belongings, they might have thought it was here. Which would clear Brie.

I had thought she might have taken it simply because she’d told me where to hide it. I didn’t have to secure it to the backof the dresser, but it was a good idea in light of my suspicions about Gino. Was I giving her the benefit of the doubt because I liked her?

I couldn’t help but think of all the mysteries I’ve read where the sidekick betrayed the hero. Brie had already called herself Dr. Watson. I haven’t read every single Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story, but I don’t think that Watson ever betrayed Sherlock Holmes.

I was no Sherlock, but I still had a hard time believing that Brie would have made such a mess of my room and broken the mirror. It was mean and borderline threatening.

The thief, when he or she couldn’t find the book in Diana’s luggage, could have thoughtDianahad hidden it. That put Gino and Amber at the top of my list.

I was about to text Brie and ask if she could meet before the sunset cruise, when I saw that she had texted me twenty minutes ago.

u mad? we need to talk.

I texted Brie and said one hour, Blue Dahlia. That would give me enough time to get ready for the cruise. She responded with a thumbs-up emoji.

Briecouldhave taken the book, but it now seemed unlikely. She’d come through with information about Gino Garmon, Diana and Amber’s relationship, and Trevor Lance’s marital situation. She would have just asked me to see the book.

After my experience with the police on St. John, I considered reaching out to Ethan Valentine directly. Except, what ifhewas involved? Crusty said he’d taken Diana to Valentine’s private dock the night she disappeared. Maybe I should talk to Tristan. He would know if Valentine had been on the island Sunday. If he wasn’t, then he had nothing to do with her murder. Or Luis, Valentine’s uncle, would know. I doubted the octogenarian had strangled anyone.

I turned to my computer and searched for Ethan Valentine.

The first link that came up was his bio on the Valentine Enterprises website. It was surprisingly brief for a multibillion-dollar company. He founded the company to support video game creators by offering a full array of services from debugging a program to marketing and distribution. He purchased projects in the independent marketplace and repackaged them for mass distribution. There was nothing about him taking a sabbatical for three years on an island, and trade magazines referred to him as reclusive but engaged with his business.

I clicked images, and there were pictures of three different men named Ethan Valentine, none of whom could be the dotcom genius. The MIT student paper wrote a short article about Ethan Valentine:

Computer science and engineering major Ethan Valentine sold a data compression program he developed in high school to Roland Briggs, the head of the Briggs fortune and a fellow MIT alum. While the details of the sale are not yet known, rumors indicate that Briggs paid low eight figures for the program. Valentine couldn’t be reached for comment, but his roommate John Douglas said he wasn’t planning to return to MIT in the fall. “Ethan has more ideas than anyone, and he plans on using this sale as seed money for his own company.”

Briggs. That couldn’t be a coincidence, right?

I did a quick search on Roland Briggs, and yes, hewasthe father of Parker Briggs, the man I’d spoken to, the man who had been arguing with his ex-girlfriend and Diana Harden’s current girlfriend, Amber Jones.

That was a connection I couldn’t ignore.

I didn’t have time to dig into the finance articles, so I saved them to my desktop to peruse later.

I had just changed into a new dress when Braden called.

“You answered your phone too fast,” he said.

“I’m getting ready for a sunset dinner cruise,” I informed him.

“Then I won’t keep you long. I looked into the two companies you asked about. Ninety percent of Lance & Wong Development, LLC, is their commercial real estate company, AV Properties and Trust, which has just under $16 billion in assets and a market value of $17.5 billion, according to Forbes. They have several major projects in the works, but the largest two are a $100 million project in Dallas and a $120 million project in Nashville.”

A market value of $17.5 billion would make Lance’s business probably one of the top twenty in the country. I asked Braden, “Anything sketchy about their business model?”

“They’ve been sued a half-dozen times but only lost once, a wrongful termination and breach of contract case against a small concrete company out of Houston. They have a mixed reputation in the real estate world.”

“What about the other ten percent of their business?”

“I didn’t really look at that. I can.”