Page 90 of Secrets Along the Shore (Beach Read Thrillers #1)
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
The world always seems a bit more right when I’m tucked under a blanket on the couch with a hot mug of coffee in my hand and my dog curled up at my feet, like I am now.
Bilbo is a snoring mound of gray fur, tucked into a tight circle.
James is in the kitchen whipping up chicken enchiladas for dinner.
The kitchen’s his safe space, and he’s needed it this past week.
It’s good to see him absorbed in something he enjoys, grateful he’s getting a reprieve from thinking about the tough things, even if only for a little while.
We have spent the last several days drowning in tough things.
I went straight from the river house to meet with Sheriff Vickers.
It wasn’t pleasant. He gave me the dressing-down I deserved for going to confront Edward Calder on my own, and for not giving him a heads-up about the developments in the case related to the Calders as I learned them.
I apologized and tried to say all the right things about doing it differently next time—though we both know, even if I improve my communication, there's not much I can do about my tendency to leap first and look later.
If I were anyone else, it might have meant the end of my working relationship with the sheriff's department.
Fortunately, I have enough of a solid track record that I think I'll get a pass. This time.
James had it harder. Not only was his brother responsible for the death of two women, but his father’s since been questioned too, and the degree of his involvement still isn’t fully fleshed out.
Edward is denying he knew anything about the murders, the attempted murder of Parry, the cover-up…
but the circumstantial evidence points to him knowing a lot, and the offer to purchase the land Kamden Avery’s body was buried on will be difficult to overcome.
James glances up and catches me watching him.
He shoots me a half-hearted smile, then returns to his pots and pans.
I wish I knew how to help him. I haven’t got the first clue how to process that kind of betrayal.
It isn’t my family—not my blood family, anyway—and I’m really struggling.
I can’t imagine what it’s like inside his head right now.
And then there’s the thing I can’t say. The thing I can’t share with him.
That I thought he was the one who killed Kamden Avery.
He’s got enough to deal with. He doesn’t need to know that, on top of everything else, I doubted him.
My phone rings, and my heart lifts when I see it’s Cole.
I haven’t heard much from him this past week.
He’s been bogged down in the investigation into Fogerty’s assassination, and of course, they had to pick up the slack on Kamden Avery’s case when I was taken off it because of my conflicts of interest.
He texted early this morning to tell me they finally got a lead in Fogerty’s murder. One of Teresa Anders’s cousins tied one on in a bar a couple nights ago and let it slip that he was the one who “took out” Fogerty. They’re going to bring him in today.
“Hey!” I say when I answer. “What’s the word? Did you get him?”
James looks up from the stove, his eyebrows high. “Did he?” he mouths.
I shrug and point to the phone.
“Yeah. We did.”
I nod vigorously, and James gives me a silent thumbs up. “James says, ‘Congrats.’”
“Yeah, thanks,” Cole says. Then a text comes through.
Am I on speaker ?
Those four words set my radar off. I sit up and text him back.
No.
“Soph,” Cole says, his voice gentle but urgent, “we’ve had the tech guys working on Matthew’s phone.”
“Okay.”
“They found a series of texts between him and Edward. He deleted them, but data remained that the techs were able to recover. They’re about you, Soph.”
“Mm-hmm,” I say, urging him on, forcing my gaze to lock on the wisps of fuzz in my blanket.
“In them, Matthew tells Edward he thinks James needs to meet you.”
A ripple of nausea rolls over me, but I fight it off. It isn’t unheard of for a guy to suggest his brother ought to meet someone. This doesn’t have to mean anything.
“What’s your point?” It slips out before I can stop it, and I’m vaguely aware that the sounds James was making in the kitchen have stopped.
“Matthew also texts that it would be helpful to have someone ‘on the inside’ during the investigation. Soph…you meeting James was a set-up. And there’s more. The timing of the texts…Soph, they were sent before Teresa’s death—but after Kamden went missing. Do you know what that means?”
I know what that means.
“Soph, another woman died while Edward and James were doing their best to keep Matthew’s first murder covered up.”
The room disappears, replaced by the Habitat for Humanity fundraiser just over a year ago, where I happened to run into Matthew Calder.
I didn’t know him well—Grace had introduced us sometime previously at the Ink & Ivy—but he insisted on introducing me to his brother, James, the state representative.
James and I ended up spending the whole event together, laughing, dancing…
James didn’t leave my side the entire night.
He didn’t leave my side… ever …after that .
It doesn’t mean James knew. He might have been a pawn in this too.
That hope evaporates with Cole’s next words.
“There’s a single text from James. Two days after the fundraiser where you told me you met. I checked.”
“And?” I ask, shutting my eyes as I work to keep my breath steady.
“It just says,” he pauses, clearing his throat, “I’m in.”
Heat flushes my skin, and I exhale with a shudder.
“I’m coming over, Sophie. We need to question James again. With this development?—”
I hang up before he can finish.
That promise I made to Sheriff Vickers about doing things differently?
I’m about to break it.