Page 39 of Southernmost Murder

Because if anyone knew the next step, it would be an FBI agent, right?

Jun shook his head. “Not sure.”

My shoulders slumped.

He motioned with a nod for me to follow as he walked toward the museum. His pace was deliberately slow. “We need to consider what we know.”

“Are we crime solving?” I whispered harshly.

Jun stopped. “No.” A smile crossed his face. Quick. There and gone. “Yesterday morning you found an old skeleton while removing wallpaper.”

“Right.”

“Twenty minutes later, despite a locked house, it disappeared.”

“Yes. But the parlor window is broken. I figured out how to open it from the outside. So a possible exit.”

“And a possible entrance into the house last night,” Jun added.

I nodded. “Whatever happened between Lou Cassidy and the… the… Smith-lookalike, it must have begun in the captain’s study, because the marlinespike was used as a weapon.”

Jun put his hands on his hips, surveying the flocks of tourists around us as he listened to me. “Cassidy was, for all intents and purposes, a business rival.”

“I guess so,” I said, frowning.

“He wanted to turn the Smith you’d built up as a successful businessman into a pirate in the public’s eye?”

“Right.”

“Who knows about the skeleton?” Jun asked.

“Besides everyone?” I said. “You, me, Adam, Herb, Tillman, the board….”

“And who knows about Cassidy?”

“The same, pretty much, plus all the cops.”

Jun put his hand on the back of my head, petting. I loved when he did that. It seemed to soothe him and made me feel special. “We’ve overlooked one incident.”

“What’s that?”

Jun glanced down. “In the closet. The message written at the bottom of the nook.”

“AnXon my heart,” I whispered. “And only you and I know about that.”

“Maybe someone else,” Jun said. “Considering how quickly the skeleton vanished, someone knew exactly where to look and felt it imperative you not uncover the identity.”

“Do you think someone’s been watching me?” I asked. The cottage cheese and avocado from breakfast rolled around in my stomach.

Jun didn’t exactly answer that question. “Someone’s been watching you more closely than what I deem comfortable.”

I felt like I had creepy-crawlies all over my body and scratched nervously at my chest.

“You said something last night about Smith,” Jun said. He dropped his hand from my hair and slid his fingers through mine as he started walking toward the colorfully painted museum storefront. “Him being a wrecker?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s a wrecker?”