Page 19

NINETEEN

My stomach churned with nerves as I made my way home. As I walked, I kept hitting Lizzie’s number on my cell, but she didn’t answer. My heart in my throat, I pushed open the door to the secret entrance to the court. Everyone’s porch lights were on, and the neighbors were in our front garden.

“What’s going on?” I asked as I jogged toward them. “Where’s Lizzie?”

Rob held up his hands. “Breathe, she’s okay. No one was hurt.”

“Hurt? What happened?”

Sheila, who had just come out of my front door, motioned to me.

“Kieran needs to see you,” she said.

“How is my sister?”

“She’s fine. They’re in the kitchen with Mr. Poe. He scared off the intruder.”

“Intruder?”

I rushed inside. “Lizzie?”

“Kitchen,” she said. Her voice was calm so at least there was that.

She and Kieran sat at the table.

She jumped up when I came in and we wrapped our arms around one another.

“Someone broke into the house.”

My heart sped so fast I could barely breathe.

“Did they hurt you?”

She kept her arms around me but shook her head. “Mr. Poe scared them off. They ran out the back as we came in the front.”

I glanced down to find Mr. Poe staring up at us as if confirming her story with the cock of his head.

“Good boy,” I said.

“He scared me to death; he has no fear,” she said into my shoulder. “I was worried the person who broke in might hurt him. But he chased them away.”

He was such a tiny furball, I couldn’t imagine anyone being scared of him. But he did have a ferocious bark and growl.

“I’ll need you to look through your office to tell me if they took anything,” Kieran said from the table.

“What?” I’d forgotten he was there.

“According to your sister, the only room they seemed to have searched is your office,” he said.

My head swung around so fast to Lizzie it made my neck hurt. “Laptop?” My life and my latest book were on that small machine. My heart dropped to my stomach, and nausea threatened. Everything was backed up to the Cloud, and I emailed my story to myself every time I finished a chapter. But my life was on that machine.

“Still there,” she said. “Though Kieran said it appeared they were looking for something. You’ll need to check it out.”

“To see if they took anything,” Kieran added. “Forensics is in there now, searching for fingerprints. We have yours on file, but we will need yours, Lizzie. You can come to the station tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“But I’d like to take you into your office, Mercy, to see if anything is missing.”

I nodded, still nervous. My stomach churned with fright and anger. How dare someone break into our home? This wasn’t the first time it had happened here.

We had an intruder not long after Lizzie and I had moved to Shamrock Cove, but it was a killer looking for information. That was scary enough. But when I’d lived in Manhattan, my stalker had broken into my apartment more than once. The intruder hadn’t done much more than move things around, but they had taken some personal items like photos, and one of my old journals.

The police couldn’t do much, and not long after that, Lizzie needed my help in Texas. We’d received the news about our mom’s cancer diagnosis, and I’d dropped everything and gone home.

After Mom died, Lizzie’s fiancé and his daughter had been killed in an accident. We’d needed a fresh start.

One of the reasons we’d moved to Shamrock Cove was because it was one of the safest places to live. It truly was. I guess we were just unlucky.

Or it might have had something to do with my nosing into murder cases.

I followed the detective to the door of my office. Papers had been strewn about. Drawers were open on my desk, and some books had been pulled from the shelves. I let go of the breath I’d been holding when I found my laptop still plugged into the large monitor I used when writing.

Like most authors, my laptop was my life. I was glad it hadn’t been taken.

I glanced around the room taking in the contents. The only thing that was missing had been next to my laptop.

“Well?” Kieran asked.

“The copies of the manuscripts you made me are gone,” I said. “I’d been locking them up, but forgot and left them out. But that doesn’t make sense. They have to know you have the originals from the crime scene. What good would it do them to take the ones you made for me?”

“Perhaps they thought them to be the originals,” he said.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. What if they, too, are looking for information within the text.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe they needed copies of the two manuscripts because they are trying to find something out.”

“Or trying to hide something,” he said.

“You could be right, but like I said, they have to know you have the originals. I’ve read both manuscripts front to back. I didn’t find any clues.” And it had been extremely annoying.

“You said the story was about a missing girl,” he said. “The older manuscript, I mean.”

“Right. But we know that James and his friends helped someone get to the States and away from their family. She wasn’t really missing. There’s no reason to take the manuscript since it’s a work a fiction.”

“Is there anything else missing?”

I looked around the room. Then I shook my head. “I don’t think so. It almost looks like they knocked the books on the floor to make it look like more than it is.”

Anger roiled in my stomach. Maybe it was petty, but I’d never liked strangers touching my things. I wasn’t sure anyone would like that. But something niggled at the back of my brain.

“You have that look,” he said.

I stared at him, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“The one where you’ve come to a conclusion of sorts.”

“It’s not really a conclusion so much as an idea. What if they took the manuscripts on purpose to steer us in the wrong direction? We’ve both been through them, and found nothing.”

“Except we still don’t know who wrote the original book. The one that wasn’t published.”

“True. But it almost feels like the killer wants us to think this is about those books. What if it’s a ruse?”

“So, you don’t think they took the books for a reason?”

I scrunched up my face. “It’s just all way too convenient and contrived. If this was in a novel I was writing, my editor would beat me up for it. No. I think it’s someone who knows what a red herring is. And they are most definitely trying to send us down the wrong path with the investigation.”

“So, they broke into your home for no reason? It seems odd they’d chance it, given how secure the court is.”

“Right. Did any of our suspects live on the court in the past? Maybe their parents and someone in the family inherited the home?”

“Not as far as I know. My grandmother might know more about that. But it hasn’t come up in our research of the victims or suspects. We do know they came in the back door, which was unlocked.”

“They came in the back door? That means they knew about the path that runs along the back of the homes.”

He smirked. “That’s public land. Everyone knows about that path.”

He wasn’t wrong.

At one time or another, all of the suspects had lived in Shamrock Cove. Our tiny neighborhood of thatched cottages was well known in town.

But if I was right, someone was determined to manipulate us into thinking that the deaths had been tied to something in the manuscripts. If they weren’t, we would be back to square one.

Or, would we?

The mayor, the professor, and the chef were our suspects. They all had reasons for wanting James dead. He hadn’t been the best of friends. But why would one of them kill his agent?