Page 28 of Dead in the Water (Lily Larkin Mysteries #4)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Maria answered the door quickly once Flynn clanged the knocker.

“Oh, hello,” she said, then glanced nervously over her shoulder. “Glynis isn’t home at the moment.”

“I was actually hoping to speak to you for a few minutes, if you have time.”

“Yes, okay.” She opened the door wider and he stepped inside, then continued along the hall to the kitchen.

He’d been to the house a few weeks ago, collecting a basket of contaminated food which had been delivered to Maria. That might be a good way to break the ice, instead of jumping in with questions about the ice cream shop.

“Are you fully recovered now?” he asked, smiling warmly.

She nodded to the chairs but didn’t offer him a drink – the typical greeting when he visited people on the island. Sometimes, they wouldn’t even ask, just make him a brew and set it in front of him. Often with biscuits too.

“I feel fine now, thank you.” She sat and clasped her hands in her lap. “I thought you were finished with investigating that. Didn’t the guy confess in the end?”

“Yes. I’m not here to dig into it. We just like to check in and make sure people are fully recovered.”

“Glynis and I are both fine.”

“That’s great.” He waited for her to say more, but she didn’t seem to be the chatty type. She’d been aloof the last time he’d visited, too, though she’d also been quite ill. “I didn’t actually come here in any official capacity,” he said to fill the silence.

“Okay,” she said curtly.

“I heard you own the ice cream shop.”

She pulled her necklace from her neckline and toyed with the pendant. “I do,” she said, the words clipped.

“You didn’t want anyone to know,” he stated, wondering how he could get her to open up.

“That’s not a crime, is it?”

“No.” He smiled, hoping to ease the tension in the room. “Lily was looking for the owner when she came to the island. She thought maybe you were connected to her parents.”

Maria inhaled through her nose. “I don’t know how she got that in her head, but I told her I didn’t know her parents. I’m sorry if she was expecting something from me, but as I told her, I don’t know anything, so I’m afraid I can’t help her find whatever it is she’s looking for.”

Flynn nodded. He’d interviewed enough people to know when you could entice people to say more and when nothing would make them talk. People wouldn’t talk until they were ready to. Especially when they were lying.

And he was reasonably certain Maria was lying.

“Is your necklace sentimental?” he asked, changing tack.

She moved the pendant back and forth along the chain, but didn’t reply.

“There’s a newspaper article with a photo of you from when the shop opened, and you were wearing it then, too.”

She shifted in her seat. “I suppose it is sentimental.”

“Was it a gift?”

A smile touched her lips then. “A friend of mine gave it to me when I bought the ice cream shop. I felt as though I’d been drifting through life until then.

I told my friend I wanted to do something for myself instead of always doing what was expected of me.

Buying the ice cream shop was my way of putting down roots.

That’s what I said.” Her eyes softened. “My friend said if I was going to live on such a small island, I’d need an anchor, not roots. ”

Flynn smiled at the story. “Are you still in touch?”

He could almost see her guard snap back into place. She tucked the necklace into her blouse, out of sight.

“We drifted apart,” she said. “We don’t speak any more.”

“That’s a shame.”

She nodded once, then stood abruptly. “It was good of you to call in.”

“Give my best to Glynis,” he said at the door.

He walked back to the station with even more questions than he’d started with.