Page 4 of Light of Day (Sea Smoke Island #1)

Heather was pretty sure that Luke’s family problems were nothing like her own, but she appreciated the expression of solidarity.

Despite her texts and requests for a pickup, her mother hadn’t shown up at the dock.

She’d walked the mile to her house, only to find it empty, and more dilapidated than ever.

A broken gutter dripped water onto the overgrown rhododendrons out front.

The formerly white trim was a mostly peeling greenish-grayish color, some combination of mold and algae.

The sight of such neglect made her stomach tighten with fear. Was it a sign her mother was drinking again? During her last few phone conversations, she hadn’t noticed any signs of it. Sally McPhee had talked mostly about how busy she was.

Inside, she’d found a sink full of dirty dishes, a cast iron frying pan balanced on the edge of the counter, and a toaster with the cord yanked out. Her mother must have left in a hurry. Maybe she was just busy.

Heather had dumped her bag in the upstairs bedroom, with its steep eaves and wallpaper with a pattern of ladies’ parasols, for no apparent reason.

This had been her room growing up, although her mother had packed most of her things away since then.

A distant cousin had come to live with her for a time, until they’d had a massive blowup.

Maybe fighting with Sally McPhee went with the room, who knew?

In the garden shed, she’d dug out her old bike and decided she might as well track down Luke Carmichael.

On her way, she’d conjured up all the memories she had of him, which wasn’t many.

He’d dated her old friend Carrie Prevost and then married her when she got pregnant, which had shocked everyone.

Izzy must be…six now? Hadn’t he had a massive blowout with his father too?

In the passenger seat of his truck, a newish-model Nissan Frontier, nice but nothing fancy, she surreptitiously scrutinized him.

He drove with the relaxed ease of someone completely comfortable in their body.

He’d been an athlete in high school, she remembered now.

All six of the Carmichael kids had gone to private school, of course, and they were all athletic.

She remembered hearing that he’d won a hockey trophy.

He had that air about him, very physical and alert.

Dark hair, blue eyes—all the Carmichaels had that coloring.

The Carmichael gene was strong, holding up through all of John Griffin Carmichael III’s marriages.

“So what can you tell me about Gabby?” Luke broke the silence, making her start. She’d been taking in the pine trees and blackberry thickets along the side of the road, watching for glimpses of the ocean where the woods thinned out.

“Gabby and I met in journalism school. She has a master’s degree in journalism, graduated from Simmons in Boston. She’s very smart and an excellent writer. She runs a blog that has half a million followers.”

“Is she from Boston?”

“No, she’s actually from South Portland. That was how we bonded initially. We were the only two students in our program from Maine. We hit it off and now I would say she’s one of my best friends. You know how it is with some people, you meet them and you already feel like you know each other?”

“Like us?” Luke grinned down at her, and she thought, danger . Luke Carmichael was far too attractive for comfort. That grin could cause a girl to abandon everything sensible.

“We do know each other, so no, not exactly.”

“Do we?” He made the question sound like a tease, but she refused to take him up on anything flirtatious.

“We know enough.”

“Do we?” he repeated. But he must have picked up on her resistance, because his tone shifted. “Do you have a photo of Gabby?”

“Yes.” She’d already prepared for this by making a Gabby album on her phone. Pulling up the most straightforward photo, she held up the phone so he could see it. “This was just last week.”

His glance was brief but comprehensive. “Can you email that photo to me?”

“Sure. But it’s not like it will be hard to spot one of the very few non-white people on this island,” she said dryly. “She wouldn’t exactly blend in.”

“Things are changing around here, you might be surprised.”

“Hmm…” She cocked her head at him. “Let me guess, the hotel has run out of islanders to hire.”

He laughed wryly. “Uh-huh. I hear much of the hotel kitchen staff are Somali. It’s working out great for everyone.”

“Wait…you hear? You’re a Carmichael. Don’t you know?”

“Strictly speaking, I’m banned from the premises. But when I’m on official business, my father doesn’t have much of a choice. Most of my information about the hotel comes through the grapevine.”

Wow. Maybe she really didn’t know much about Luke. “Is that hard for you?”

He glanced at her, surprised, as if he didn’t get that question a lot. “Sometimes, yeah. It hurt a lot at first. But I hope it’s not forever. I don’t mind being cut out of my father’s will, but I’d like my daughter to know her grandfather someday.”

They reached the road that connected the eastern and western lobes of the island. The tide was high enough that it almost felt as if they were driving on the surface of the ocean. Water to the right, water to the left…just a narrow band of paved road ahead and behind.

She’d only been on this road a few times in her life, and it always made her nervous. It felt as if the ocean was closing in, seeking its chance to devour the sandbar, the pavement, and any humans who might be on it.

A sickening thought flashed into her mind. What if Gabby had drowned?

The rocks along the shoreline were so slippery at low tide, covered in seaweed and algae. Heather had slipped many times. She even had a barnacle scar on her right knee to prove it.

As they drove off the sandbar and onto the eastern part of the island, she firmly shoved the thought from her mind. Why would Gabby be climbing on the rocks? She wasn’t here for an adventure. She was here because of some mysterious lead.

“Gabby said something shady was going on here,” she said to Luke. “She was investigating something for a story.”

“For her blog?”

“No, her blog’s about celebrity gossip. Unless maybe one of your family members is in the news? You’re the closest thing to celebrities that we have here.”

“Always a possibility,” Luke said lightly.

“But as far as I know, none of my siblings are involved in any big scandals at the moment. Barnaby is back from mountain-climbing in the Himalayas, I think Carson just got engaged, and Fiona might be around. But I’m not sure about Rufus and Ruby. You never know what they’re up to.”

Heather smiled, a little envious of all his siblings. Being an only child meant she relied on her friends more. “Gabby was working on something for our podcast. We’re all about exposing bad people. Know any of those around here?”

“Oh boy.” Luke whistled. “That seems like an important detail.”

But Heather’s attention was now on the magnificent sight up ahead.

The Lightkeeper Inn perched on a rolling expanse of lawn at the top of a two hundred foot granite cliff.

Imposing white pillars held up a balcony that stretched the entire length of the upper floor.

The Carmichael family occupied the entire third floor, and a glassed-in widow’s walk sat at the very top of the structure. The views from up there were legendary.

The hotel dated back to 1915, the days of steam engines and bathing costumes.

It had a gracious, timeless feel to it, emphasized by the patriotic bunting draped near the entrance and the Adirondack chairs positioned on the terrace.

Heather imagined ladies in long dresses playing lawn tennis on the green and children playing hide and seek in the blueberry bushes.

Although she couldn’t see it anywhere, she knew there was a long wooden staircase that led to a private sandy beach at the base of the cliff.

Technically, the beach couldn’t be private, because that would violate state law.

But since the only access to it was on private land, it was a distinction without a difference.

In more recent years, John Carmichael had installed an elevator that took guests to the beach and back up when they were adequately tired and sandy.

Flags flapped at the top of three poles installed at the very edge of the cliff—an American flag, the new State of Maine flag, and the Lightkeeper Inn’s very own “crest,” which, legend had it, had been gifted to the Carmichaels by Queen Victoria herself.

“What’s on that flag, anyway?” she asked Luke as he drove around the stately wings of the hotel to the rear entrance.

“Two eagles arrant. That means they’re facing each other in battle mode.

Probably about to rip each other’s eyes out.

There’s also a wolf in there, which never made sense to me because this island has never seen a wolf.

We did have a coyote once, remember? It must have swum over from the mainland.

It ate a bunch of chickens. We had an island-wide manhunt for that poor thing. ”

She laughed at the memory. “I was rooting for the coyote, by the way.”

“I was too.”

They shared a glance of complicity before he brought the truck to a halt between a guest shuttle van and a golf cart.

“Let me do the talking, if you don’t mind,” he said as they both swung out of the truck. She breathed deep of the fresh air—was it even more pure here, at nearly five hundred feet of elevation? Or did rich people’s air just smell better?

“That’s fine. I’ll observe and take notes.”

He nodded and led the way into a nondescript back door clearly meant for the staff.

She wondered if it was strange for him to use the service entrance after growing up like a prince on the family floor of the hotel.

She’d heard people describe how luxurious it was—couches covered in velvet, gilded mirrors, ornate family silver, a real Rembrandt displayed in the dining room.

She wished she could ask for a tour while they were on the premises, but Luke might decide her presence was more trouble than it was worth. So she held her tongue.

Their first stop was to the room where Gabby had been staying, Room 232. Judy Griffin, the manager—cropped red hair, black-rimmed glasses, dated pantsuit—led them up the stairs to a room on the second floor.

As they stepped inside, Heather caught her breath.

A king-size bed with a princess canopy faced two windows with a breathtaking view of the endless sparkling Atlantic Ocean.

A thick sea-green carpet sank under her feet.

She could only imagine how annoying it must be to vacuum.

The nightstand was cherrywood on top of an elaborate ironwork base that reminded Heather of an old fashioned sewing machine.

An opened suitcase sat on a low stand, and a purple sweater was draped over the loveseat in the small seating area in the corner.

“This is where Gabby was staying,” Judy told them. “Her things are still here, as you can see. She left a bit of a mess.”

Heather opened her mouth to protest such a callous statement, but Luke shot her a look. She bit her lip and stayed quiet.

“We’re just going to poke around for a bit,” he said. “We can close up when we’re done.”

Judy nodded, though Heather couldn’t help but notice an additional suspicious glance her way.

“Friendly,” she murmured dryly to Luke after the manager had gone. “I bet Gabby felt very welcomed here.”

That comment made him look up from the nightstand, where he was leafing through a paperback book whose title Heather couldn’t see. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. She told me…” Under his steady gaze, she forced herself to continue. “We came here in March to visit my mother. It was Gabby’s first time on Sea Smoke and we had a huge fight.”

“About?”

“About the fact that I didn’t warn her she might be the only non-white person here.

It wasn’t quite true, but close enough. Anyway, I hadn’t really thought about it, or how it might feel to her.

She said that people were looking at her funny and it made her very uncomfortable. We left two days early.”

Luke was frowning as he glanced around the room. “So why the hell did she come back two months later?”

“Like I said, she was onto some kind of story, but she was pretty cryptic about it. She wanted me to come see in person. I don’t know any details. But it must have been really big to get her back to Sea Smoke.”

“Hm.” Luke jerked his head toward the suitcase. “Want to go through her things and see if anything catches your eye? Less of an invasion of privacy,” he added. “Since you’re her friend.”

Heather knelt next to the suitcase and gingerly looked through Gabby’s clothes, still neatly folded, with various hair care accessories encased in clear plastic zippered bags.

Gabby traveled a lot, and her packing experience showed in her efficient use of the space and color coordination.

Her colors for this trip—she always chose three and stuck to those—were black, purple, and white, all of which would look gorgeous against her rich amber-brown skin.

“Nothing but clothes in here,” she called to Luke, who’d stepped into the bathroom. “Including a grammar nerd t-shirt I gave her for Christmas.”

“Did you check all the pockets? Hers and the suitcases?”

“No.” Feeling silly at that oversight, Heather searched through each pocket of every pair of pants. Gabby was going to be pissed that she’d messed up her perfectly ordered suitcase.

If she ever got a chance to see it.

Tears formed in Heather’s eyes as stark fear tugged at her again. This was just so unlike her, all of this…something very bad must have happened.

She tried to talk herself down. It could also be that Gabby had met someone and had been spending all her time with him. And forgotten her phone charger or lost her phone.

“Found something.” Luke strode from the bathroom, wastepaper basket in hand.

“You searched her trash?” Heather flushed with secondhand embarrassment. What if Gabby had been on her period? “What is it?”

“Come on, let’s go. I know who got her to come out here.”