Page 37 of Light of Day (Sea Smoke Island #1)

Luke and Chen hurried across the town center, dodging kids on bicycles and two trucks that had paused in the middle of the road to discuss something. The light was on inside the Historical Society office, and he saw Amy Lou’s old Audi parked out front.

He kept trying to picture her strangling Denton with a scarf on the cliffs of North Point, then rolling him onto the rocks. It seemed absurd, impossible. Apparently he just wasn’t cynical enough. He could learn a thing or two from Detective Chen.

“Amy Lou Westbrook?” Chen demanded as they pushed through the door. Amy Lou spun around, nearly knocking over the package of chocolate chip cookies she was arranging on a paper plate. “We have some questions for you.”

No scarf, Luke noticed. Was that significant? Had she ripped it while strangling Denton? Then again, she had a whole collection of dorky scarves. The absence of one meant nothing.

“But I…I already…more than once, mind you…who are…Luke?” She ended on a quavery note.

“This is Detective Chen from Harbortown PD. She’s here to follow up on some leads regarding Denton’s…” He trailed off as a sharp scent drifting into his nostrils. He turned to Chen. “Do you smell that?”

Gas. As if fumes were filtering from an unsecured gas can.

“I’ve been smelling it all morning,” said Amy Lou, waving her hand in front of her nose. “I think it’s coming from the community hall. There’s a stove there, as you know.”

“It’s much closer than that.” Luke followed his nose, sniffing as the smell got stronger the closer he got to the back room.

“You can’t go back there,” Amy Lou insisted. She ran to block his path. “That area is completely off limits. The board would fire me if I let anyone in.”

“I’m not anyone, I’m the constable. Move aside, Amy Lou.”

“Let me call the board. I have to notify them, get their permission--”

“This is police business, ma’am,” said Chen, holding up a set of handcuffs. “Do you need me to make it official?”

Amy Lou gave a gasp of shock, her tanned face paling against her bright pink lipstick. “You wouldn’t.”

“I notice you have large feet.” Chen pointed dramatically at Amy Lou’s shoes.

“Wh-what?”

Biting back a laugh, Luke took advantage of Amy Lou’s confusion to move past her.

In the forbidden back room, Luke ignored the totes and shelves and filing cabinets and focused on the bright red plastic gas can shoved into a corner behind a pile of vintage lobster buoys. “What’s that doing here?”

“I…I don’t know…” Amy Lou stammered. “They…someone must have left it here by mistake, I’ve never seen it before…”

He fixed her with a stern gaze. “Amy Lou, did you set fire to the Bloodshot Eyeball?”

“No.” She shook her head vigorously. “Absolutely not.”

He believed her. Whoever had done that had also broken in, and he didn’t think Amy Lou had that skill set.

“How about my house?”

“Of course not.”

“Denton Simms?” Her fraction of a pause told him everything he needed to know. “You’d better tell the truth, Amy Lou. If you set fire to Denton’s house, investigators will find out. Detective Chen, how soon is that arson team getting out here?”

“I believe they’re on their way,” she said smoothly. “And boy, are they good. Perps think that all the evidence will get burned up, but those arson investigators are fucking experts.”

“See?” Luke turned back to Amy Lou. “You’re better off telling us what happened instead of waiting for them.”

Amy Lou’s mouth opened, then closed again. Not quite scared enough yet.

“Once they figure out who set fire to Denton’s house, that person will become the prime suspect in his murder, right, Detective Chen?”

“No doubt.”

“It’s not what you think,” she cried. “It…it…it had to be done. It…it’s for the island. For the greater good.”

“Now that, you’re going to have to explain, because here I thought you cared about the history of this island. That house was one of the oldest still standing. You burned down a piece of history.”

Each word made her flinch, as if he was stabbing her over and over.

“Do you think I wanted to do it? Do you think it was easy? We didn’t have a choice!”

Detective Chen stepped forward, handcuffs jingling. “Okay, I’ve heard enough. We’ll need a full written confession and you’ll have to explain who this ‘we’ is, since it sounds like you didn’t act alone.”

Amy Lou was crying now, backing away, kicking at Chen, making it clear she wasn’t going to go easily. “I don’t confess! I don’t confess to anything!”

“Did you kill Denton Simms?” Luke demanded. He strode to the gas can and nudged it with his foot. A bit of gas still sloshed in the bottom. “Was that not enough? Why did you also have to burn his house down?”

“Noooo,” she wailed. “I didn’t kill Denton. I’m not a murderer. His house was empty. It wasn’t even locked. Anything could have started that fire.”

“How did you know it wasn’t locked? You were there, weren’t you?”

“I…I…”

Luke gestured to Chen to take a few steps back. He wanted to play the good cop here, because that was the only role that Amy Lou would ever see him as. “Officer Chen, can you give us a minute?”

After shooting him a narrow-eyed look, Chen stepped into the main room. “You have the time it takes me to eat two chocolate chip cookies,” she called.

“Those are for the meet—” Amy Lou began, then subsided at a look from Luke.

“Listen, Amy Lou, I don’t believe you killed Denton. But you did have motive, didn’t you? The same motive that led you to burn down his house. Add that to an arson charge, and you could be in very, very big trouble.”

She wrung her hands together. “You have to help me, Luke. I would never kill anyone. I don’t even like to eat lobster because you have to boil them alive. How could I possibly kill Denton?”

“What were you trying to destroy? What did Denton have?”

Amy Lou bit deeply into her bottom lip.

“I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me. Who were you working with? Who set those other fires last night?”

“I couldn’t say. Denton…he was going to ruin the island’s reputation.

He…he came to me with a theory based on Jimmy’s tapes, something so horrible I…

I can’t even repeat it. He even said he’d found some proof of it.

I asked him to stop stirring up trouble, but he didn’t listen to me.

After he died, I…I looked through his house to see if I could find the proof, but I didn’t. ”

“So just to be safe, you burned it down?”

She hung her head in something approaching shame. “I never would have done it if he’d left it to the historical society like he said he would. He changed his will. Now some stranger is getting it.”

“What do you know about her? Sasha Mackey, right?”

“I know nothing about her. I’ve never heard of her, because she has no connection to the island and she doesn’t deserve that house!”

He cocked his head at the sobbing woman. Instead of sympathy, he felt a growing sense of scorn.

“So you would burn down an actual piece of history to keep an off-islander from getting it? No.” He snapped his fingers.

“I know what it is. You burned down actual history to destroy evidence of other actual history that you don’t like.

What was it that Denton discovered? That people lived here before the hotel was built?

That they were forced to leave? Probably by my family?

If that’s the real history, shouldn’t everyone know about it? ”

Her head jerked up. “This island is a haven for some of the most elite families in New England. That’s the real history and that’s all anyone needs to know.”

“And you’d go to any lengths possible to make sure it stays that way, is that it?”

In a sudden movement, Amy Lou grabbed a wooden buoy and hurled it at his head. He barely ducked in time, and it went flying into the other room, where Chen said, “Ow.”

Amy Lou charged past him, trying to take advantage of his staggering, but he tackled her and wrapped his arms around her waist. They both went hurtling to the floor. Her heavy-set frame nearly crushed him, and he realized she was stronger than he’d thought.

Could she have actually strangled Denton? Now that he’d gotten this close and personal with her, he believed she could have, at least physically.

He flipped her over and pinned her arms over her head. “Cuffs,” he called to Chen. A few moments later, Amy Lou’s hands were secured and he was hauling her to her feet. Which, he saw now, weren’t particularly big.

“She confessed to arson,” he growled in Chen’s direction.

“I heard. Got it on tape.” Detective Chen flashed her phone at them.

“But I don’t think she killed Denton.”

“I didn’t.” Amy Lou was shaking like a leaf, now that her sudden spurt of flight energy had worn off. “I swear I didn’t.”

“Who set those other fires?” he demanded.

“I had nothing to do with that. I love the Bloodshot Eyeball. Did you know that building dated back to the nineteen-forties?” Their tussle had messed up her frosted blond bob, and her lipstick was smeared across her upper lip.

Now, he did feel sorry for her. She was dealing with a situation filled with cognitive dissonance—her love for history clashing with her need for that history to be flattering.

Still, he didn’t believe her. The fires were too close in time. They’d been coordinated, and she was protecting someone else. She’d slipped several times and said “we,” but now she expected him to believe her that she’d acted alone?

“This board you mentioned,” he said abruptly, his mind landing on one particular tidbit. “Who exactly is on that board?”

“Oh, it’s…well, you know, it’s just us locals.”

“Which locals?”

She gave a hysterical laugh. “You really don’t know? There’s always at least one Carmichael on the board. You never know who will show up to represent the family.”

His heart sank. “And what do the board members do?”

“They contribute the funds, they allocate them, they approve all our reports.”

“Did the board members know what Denton was working on? His theory?”

Although she didn’t answer, he saw the truth in the way she pressed her lips together. Of course they’d known.

“Did someone on the board ask you to set fire to Denton’s house?” he asked gently, hoping not to trigger any defensive walls.

No such luck. “I’m not saying anything more until I have a lawyer.”

“A lawyer. Let me guess—paid for by the board, aka John Carmichael the third?” he said sarcastically.

But Amy Lou refused to say another word without a lawyer. Smart, and definitely what he would recommend to anyone. But frustrating.

Still, she’d revealed enough. The board of the historical society was filled with his family members, just one more thing that pointed to John Carmichael III and whoever would do his bidding.

Working theory—his father was trying to keep a bombshell story from interfering with the Lighthouse Inn sale, and he was pulling out all the stops.

Judy Griffin wore scarves, right?

He needed to get to the inn and do some hardcore family interrogations.

Before they left, he thought of one more thing. “I’ll need a membership list of everyone who’s currently active in the historical society. That’s public information, no need for a lawyer.”